Color Properties of Silver Nanoparticle Composites

Abstract

In order to investigate tunable color materials comprising metallic nanospheres, we investigated the color response of structures formed by periodic arrangements of silver nanoparticles. We use different approaches to model the dielectric function of silver in order to analyze the differences introduced in the reflection and transmission spectra and, consequently, in the obtained color. To calculate the spectral response, we use the KKR method, widely used to model structures comprising layers of periodically arranged spheres. The results obtained show the relevance of the model used for the dielectric function of silver for an accurate prediction of the color produced by systems composed of nanoparticles of different sizes and filling fractions.