Spectroscopic properties of multilayered gold nanoparticle 2D sheets

We report the fabrication technique and optical properties of multilayered two-dimensional (2D) gold nanoparticle sheets ("Au nanosheet"). The 2D crystalline monolayer sheet composed of Au nanoparticles shows an absorption peak originating from a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). It was found that the absorption spectra dramatically change when the monolayers are assembled into the multilayers on different substrates (quartz or Au). In the case of the multilayers on Au thin film (d = 200 nm), the LSPR peak is shifted to longer wavelength at the near-IR region by increasing the number of layers. The absorbance also depends on the layer number and shows the nonlinear behavior. On the other hand, the multilayers on quartz substrate show neither such LSPR peak shift nor nonlinear response of absorbance. The layer number dependence on metal surfaces can be interpreted as the combined effects between the near-field coupling of the LSPR and the far-field optics of the stratified metamaterial films, as proposed in our previous study. We also report the spectroscopic properties of hybrid multilayers composed of two kinds of monolayers, i.e., Au nanosheet and Ag nanosheet. The combination of the different metal nanoparticle sheets realizes more flexible plasmonic color tuning.