Stretchable Plasmonics – A New Frontier

We report on reversible plasmonic responses to repeated mechanical stretching of large-scale metal nanoparticle superlattice sheets comprising monodisperse Au@Ag nanocubes (NCs) and Au@Ag nanocuboids (NBs). Under stretching, the dominant plasmonic resonance peak for both NB and NC superlattice sheets shifted to blue, following a power-law function of the applied strain. Interestingly, the power-law exponent (or the decay rate) showed a strong shape dependence, where a faster rate was observed for NB superlattice sheets than that for NC superlattice sheets. This allows tuning of plasmon resonance wavelength of a plasmene sheet as a function of the applied strain, hence, opening a new research direction of 'Stretchable Plasmonics' !!