Temperature Dependent Luminescence and Dephasing of Gold Nanorods

Abstract

In this study we demonstrate the impact of temperature on the luminescence emission of plasmonic nanoparticles. We examine the optical properties of single gold nanorods (GNRs) in the temperature range 1.6–295 K by confocal microscopy. Decreasing temperature leads to a reduction of the full width at half-maximum (fwhm) of the luminescence spectra, thus we can conclude that the damping of the plasmonic oscillation is strongly reduced. The main contribution to the dephasing mechanism is electron–phonon scattering and we are able to determine its contribution to the dephasing using quantitative simulations, which can describe the temperature dependent dephasing of plasmonic nanoparticles.