Nanoporous gold-alumina core-shell films with tunable optical properties

Tuning of the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of nanoporous metals is at the heart of manipulating light within extremely small volumes for the implementation of optical devices at the nanoscale. In this work, nanoporous gold-alumina core-shell films with fixed gold skeletons and different thicknesses of alumina shells are fabricated using chemical corrosion and subsequent atomic layer deposition. Optical transmission of the nanoporous composite films can be tailored through LSPR excitations of the three-dimensional gold skeleton and the alterable alumina shells as the covering dielectric. A 92 nanometer red-shift of the LSPR band is attained via its dielectric medium dependence and the comparable decay length with pore size. The widely tunable optical transmission and significantly improved stability thus suggest incorporating nanoporous gold-alumina into promising nano-devices with reliable performance. Low temperature surface decoration (< 100 degrees C) provides a universal route to tune the optical properties while retaining the spatial geometry of the metallic nanostructures.