Localized ZnO growth on a gold nano antenna by plasmon assisted hydrothermal synthesis.
The excitation of localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) in metal nanostructures enables subwavelength photon localization and large electric field enhancement, which can be advantageously used to strongly enhance light matter interactions at the nanoscale. For this purpose, efficient methods for deterministically handling and arranging nanomaterials at the exact position of the localized electric field are required. In this letter, we propose a novel method based on a hydrothermal synthesis reaction to locally and selectively synthetize zinc oxide in a plasmonic nano antenna. We first evidence the role of LSPR for achieving efficient heating of gold nanostructures. Then, by selectively addressing one of the LSPR of a gold antenna, we demonstrate that localized zinc oxide formation at the targeted location of the antenna can be achieved due to the nanoscale confinement of the heat production.
Nano letters