Figure 1.

(a) Scheme of slanted silver nanorod dimer on silver substrate. In the most general case, these nanorods are characterized by a nonzero tilt angle, α, and by a nonzero angle β between the rods planes. (b) Scanning electron microscope images of the fabricated structures. (c) Experimental reflectances of arrays of single tilted rods (black), pairs of touching tilted rods (namely gap g = 0, red line) and rod dimers with gap g = 100 nm (blue). Right insets report SEM images of the three cases. Geometrical parameters are α = 30°, β = 90°, h = 1.8 μm, and p = 4.5 μm. Nonpolarized light impinges at 25° along the scattering plane depicted in the left inset. The impinging angle is kept fixed for all of the experimental and simulative results presented in the paper. (d) Energy splitting of the isolated tilted rod resonance upon dimerization, and schematic representation of real and image charge distribution at resonances with corresponding exciting electric field orientations.