Plasmon absorption of embedded nanoparticles

In this paper, two different routes for modeling of the optical properties of nanoparticles embedded in thin polymer films were presented. Both routes can give comparable results. The only difference between the Rayleigh theory and the Maxwell Garnett theory for spherical particles, respectively, is the different mathematical formulation. The calculated spectra are comparable. In principle, this must be noted also for the Rayleigh Gans theory and the Maxwell Garnett theory for parallel-oriented ellipsoidal particles. The difference is only in which way the nanostructural information is introduced. This is done in the Rayleigh Gans theory as the size and shape of each single particle and in the Maxwell Garnett theory as statistical particle size and shape distribution for the particle assembly. However, in the effective medium theory the depolarization factor can only be used as mean value for all particles. Therefore, the computation of optical spectra of single particles that are characterized by image processing and the summation of all contributions to a complete spectrum can be preferred. The presented computations demonstrated passable ways to describe the optical properties of embedded nanoparticles.