Tunable Interactions of Polymer-Plasmonic Nanoparticle Composites with Visible and Near-Infrared Light

Plasmonic nanoparticles absorb or scatter a particular wavelength of light corresponding to their localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). In this work we present the utilization of Ag nanoplates in polymer composites to modulate light across the visible and NIR range. The nanoparticle-polymer nanocomposites were fabricated through either layer-by-layer assembly (LbL) or random distribution of grafted nanoparticles in polymer matrices. We studied two independent types of nanoparticle-polymer nanocomposites. Optical measurements revealed controlled transmittance and reflectance at the resonance frequency of both random and oriented polymer nanocomposites. In addition, we tuned the optical properties by controlling the density of the nanoparticles and the number of nanoparticle layers in the polymer composites.