Colloidal Gold Nanorings and Their Plasmon Coupling with Gold Nanospheres

Gold nanorings are attractive as plasmonic metal nanocrystals because they have a hollow inner cavity. Their enhanced electric field inside the ring cavity is accessible, which is highly desirable for assembling with other optical components and studying their plasmon-coupling behaviors. However, the lack of robust methods for synthesizing size-controllable and uniform Au nanorings severely impedes the study of their attractive plasmonic properties and plasmon-driven applications. Herein, an improved wet-chemistry method is reported for the synthesis of monodisperse colloidal Au nanorings. Using circular Au nanodisks with different thicknesses and diameters as templates, Au nanorings are synthesized with thicknesses varied from ≈30 to ≈50 nm and cavity sizes varied from ≈90 to ≈40 nm. The produced Au nanorings are assembled with colloidal Au nanospheres to yield Au nanoring–nanosphere heterodimers in sphere-in-ring and sphere-on-ring configurations on substrates. The sphere-in-ring heterodimers exhibit the interesting feature of plasmonic Fano resonance upon the excitation of the dark quadrupolar plasmon mode of the Au nanorings. The open cavity in a nanoring holds a great promise for studying plasmon-coupled systems, which will facilitate the construction of advanced metamaterials and high-performance Fano-based devices.