Single-particle plasmon resonance spectroscopy of phase transition in vanadium dioxide.
We demonstrate thermally controlled plasmon resonance modulation of single gold nanoparticles on vanadium dioxide thin films by performing dark-field spectroscopy measurements at different temperatures. The plasmon resonance of the nanoparticles exhibits a significant blueshift in the visible range when the vanadium dioxide film undergoes its insulator-to-metal phase transition around 67 °C. More importantly, the resonance shift shows a clear hysteresis, mirroring the behavior of the vanadium dioxide film. At a fixed wavelength, the scattering intensity of Au particles also shows a hysteretic behavior decorated with an overshoot before (after) the insulator-metal (metal-insulator) phase transition of the vanadium dioxide film, suggesting that the nanoparticle is probing local variations in the phase transition.
Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom. dangyuan.lei08@imperial.ac.uk
Dang Yuan
DY
Lei
Kannatassen
K
Appavoo
Yannick
Y
Sonnefraud
Richard F
RF
Haglund
Stefan A
SA
Maier