Characterization of the Scattering Properties of a Spherical Silver Nanoparticle via the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method

Abstract

Within this work Lumerical FDTD is applied to simulate how plane polarized light interacts with a single spherical silver nanoparticle. It allows for the determination of the light retention capability of the particle based upon counting how much light is scattered away from the particle after a long period as compared to how much enters the simulation region. This quantity, the nanoparticle albedo, is a key parameter in relating the scattering enhanced out-coupling efficiency. The two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations are described for scattering layers with spherical nanoparticles in various external media for non-dispersive and have external indices from 1.0 to 2.0. FDTD takes into account this dispersive nature of the refractive index, which analytical solutions do not. A comparison between these two results will indicate that they agree within expected errors. The scattering and absorption cross-sections (CScat and CAbs), scattering and absorption efficiencies (QScat and QAbs), and albedo are calculated from this data. The albedo values are then output to the isotropic scattering model and an expected out-coupling factor is determined.