Mapping of plasmonic resonances in nanotriangles

Plasmonic resonances in metallic nano-triangles have been investigated by irradiating these structures with short laser pulses and imaging the resulting ablation and melting patterns. The triangular gold structures were prepared on Si substrates and had a thickness of 40 nm and a side length of ca. 500 nm. Irradiation was carried out with single femtosecond and picosecond laser pulses at a wavelength of 800 nm, which excited higher order plasmon modes in these triangles. The ablation distribution as well as the local melting of small parts of the nanostructures reflect the regions of large near-field enhancement. The observed patterns are reproduced in great detail by FDTD simulations with a 3-dimensional model, provided that the calculations are not based on idealized, but on realistic structures. In this realistic model, details like the exact shape of the triangle edges and the dielectric environment of the structures are taken into account. The experimental numbers found for the field enhancement are typically somewhat smaller than the calculated ones. The results demonstrate the caveats for FDTD simulations and the potential and the limitations of "near field photography" by local ablation and melting for the mapping of complex plasmon fields and their applications.