Tunable SERS in Gold Nanorod Dimers through Strain Control on an Elastomeric Substrate
In this Letter we provide experimental verification of the interparticle distance dependence of the SERS enhancement factor in 1 μm gold gapped nanorods. Au dimers are fabricated from electrochemically grown heterogeneous Au−Ag−Au nanorods and deposited on a stretchable elastomer film which allows active and reversible tuning of the interparticle gap on the sub-5-nm level. Significantly, this technique allows the distance dependence to be tracked using a single dimer, thereby avoiding enhancement factor reproducibility issues arising from morphological differences in disparate nanoparticle pairs.
We present what is to our knowledge the most complete 1-D numerical analysis of the evolution and the propagation ::: dynamics of an ultrashort laser pulse in a Ti:Sapphire laser oscillator. This study confirms the dispersion ::: managed model of mode-locking, and emphasizes the role of the Kerr nonlinearity in generating mode-locked ::: spectra with a smooth and well-behaved spectral phase. A very good agreement with experimental measurements ::: of pulse energy, spectrum, and temporal width of extracavity compressed pulses is found.