Engineering crystalline Au nanoparticles of anisotropic shape in epitaxially grown high-index SrTiO3

• DOI: 10.1007/s10853-015-9103-0
• Publication Date: 2015-05-20T15:31:14Z
• Authors: H. Bernhardt; R. Diener; P. Sungur; C. Katzer; G. Schmidl; U. Hübner; I. Uschmann; W. Fritzsche; F. Schmidl
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

We present a possible fabrication scheme of anisotropic nanoparticles grown in a crystal high-index material (SrTiO3). Different ellipsoidal Au nano-antennas were formed by changing the Au seed layer thickness and subsequent embedding in SrTiO3, prepared by pulsed laser deposition. Prior to the SrTiO3 deposition, a temperature-induced dewetting process of the thin Au films results in different particle sizes and size distributions, which are the basis for anisotropic particle formation after embedding in a crystalline SrTiO3 matrix. The dependence of the anisotropy on the Au seed layer thickness was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. At this was noticed a stronger increase in size in c-axis direction than in a/b-axis direction for an increase of the Au seed layers. Additionally, the optical response of the particles was detected via the plasmon resonance shift in extinction and scattering spectra.