Shape Dependent EMA Model of Nanostructured Anisotropic Materials

Heterogeneous nanostructures containing nanoparticles of various sizes and shapes have attracted significant attention in the development of nano-biosensors. Especially, plasmonic properties of such materials are advantageously exploited for the detection of biological and chemical substances. Since these media exhibit optical anisotropy, a valid homogenization procedure must be able to describe appropriately the relationship between the geometry of the inclusions and the nature of local field modes. We present a model approach for extension of the effective medium approximation (EMA) and its application to anisotropic nanostructures. The proposed model is based on a “strong-couple-dipole” (SCD) method including a volume-integral correction term in a Green tensor that enables to obtain more accurate representation of polarizability tensor. Derived depolarization factors for discs and bi-cone particles are compared with the early known shapes (spheroids, cylinders) and applied to nanostructures composed of the Fe or Au nanodots in polyacrylate.