Plasmon Enhanced Two-Photon Probing with Gold and Silver Nanovoid Structures

Abstract

Nonlinear optical signals benefit greatly from the enhanced local optical fields in the vicinity of plasmonic nanostructures. Gold and silver nanovoid arrays of varying size and thickness, fabricated by electrochemical deposition are shown here to act as stable plasmonic nanostructures and to enhance the weak, incoherent two‐photon excited process of surface‐enhanced hyper Raman scattering (SEHRS) with high microscopic homogeneity and reproducibility that typical SEHRS experiments have not been addressing so far. Silver nanovoids yield stronger enhancement than gold voids, but gold nanovoid arrays show improved stability at high laser excitation intensities. Combined screening experiments using SEHRS and second‐harmonic generation (SHG) reveal a dependence of the enhancement of both signals on void structural parameters and similar optimum geometries for both two‐photon processes. The results confirm the suggested important role for the enhancement of the near‐infrared excitation field in SEHRS and suggest SHG as a fast screening tool to identify nanostructures that can support high SEHRS enhancement.