Optics and biophotonics of nanoparticles with a plasmon resonance

A brief review of the state of the art in theoretical and experimental studies of the optical properties of metal particles with dipole and multipole plasmon resonances is presented. Metal spheres, nanorods, spherical and elliptic metal nanoshells are considered. The tuning of plasmon resonances of nanoparticles by varying their size, shape, structure, and dielectric environment is described. A large amount of spectrophotometric data on dimensional characteristics of gold colloidal particles is critically analysed and a new calibration of the dependence of their average size on the extinction plasmon resonance wavelength is proposed. A drastic difference between gold and silver colloids in the region of small deviations of their form from spherical is discussed. An example of the excess over not only the Rayleigh limit for the scattering depolarisation factor for dielectric needles (1/3) but also over the plasmon-resonance limit for metal thin rods (3/4) is presented for the first time. The multipole properties of nanorods and universal linear wavelength scaling of multipole resonances are considered depending on the axial ratio of nanoparticles. The outlook for modern trends in biomedical applications of nanoparticles with plasmon resonances is discussed.