Designing Plasmonic Nanostructures for Smart Materials

<br/><br/><b>Smart materials hold great promises for many intriguing applications as they exhibit chemical and physical responses to the applied external stimuli. This presentation will focus on the synthesis and assembly of nanostructured plasmonic materials with responsive optical and mechanical properties that can find applications in printing, sensing, signage, security documents, and robotics. We will discuss our recent progress on the development of novel surface-functionalized plasmonic nanostructures and their assembly into superstructures with tunable plasmonic coupling. Responses to external stimuli can be induced by manipulating the interparticle separation, which changes the plasmonic coupling of the assemblies. Further, we demonstrate a novel space-confined synthesis method for the production of magnetic/plasmonic hybrid nanostructures. The shape-dependent plasmonic and magnetic properties can be integrated into anisotropic hybrid nanostructures such as nanorods to enable the design of smart materials with colorimetric and mechanical responses. </b>