Collective plasmon modes in a compositionally asymmetric nanoparticle dimer

The plasmon coupling phenomenon of heterodimers composed of silver, gold and copper nanoparticles of 60 nm in size and spherical in shape were studied theoretically within the scattered field formulation framework. In-phase dipole coupled σ-modes were observed for the Ag-Au and Ag-Cu heterodimers, and an antiphase dipole coupled π-mode was observed for the Ag-Au heterodimer. These observations agree well with the plasmon hybridization theory. However, quadrupole coupled modes dominate the high energy wavelength range from 357-443 nm in the scattering cross section of the D=60 nm Ag-Au and Ag-Cu heterodimer. We demonstrate for the first time that collective plasmon modes in a compositionally asymmetric nanoparticle dimer have to be predicted from the dipole-dipole approximation of plasmon hybridization theory together with the interband transition effect of the constitutive metals and the retardation effect of the nanoparticle size.