PHYSICAL/OPTICAL PROPERTIES

The color of small gold rods changes dramatically when electrons are injected by chemical reductants. The longitudinal and transverse plasmon modes are both found to blue-shift, and the shift is larger for rods with larger aspect ratios. The color changes are visible to the eye for rods with aspect ratios around 2–3. It is found that the surface plasmon band is damped when charging becomes high. The effects are in qualitative agreement with a model in which the gold plasma frequency increases due to an increase in electron density.

Gold nanorod extinction spectra

Geometrical factors suitable for use in Mie–Gans theory are derived from discrete dipole approximation generated spectra for a number of pseudonanorods permitting the rapid calculation of extinction spectra. It is shown that the rod width, rod end-cap geometry flat, oblate spheroid, and sphere and the rod size distribution all have a significant effect on the position of the peak absorbance. Moreover, it is shown that spectrometric characterization of nanorods is possible given an independent measure of rod width and suitable assumptions regarding the end-cap geometry and the form of the rod-length distribution; under such conditions the full width half maximum and the extinction peak uniquely determine the average rod length and the breadth of the distribution.