Optical absorption enhancement of embedded Ag nanoparticles with ZnO nanorod arrays

Abstract We report the enhancement in optical absorption of embedded silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs), which are self‐assembled from Ag films with different thicknesses by a rapid thermal annealing treatment, with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorod arrays (NRAs) on fluorine‐doped SnO₂/glass by a simple wet‐chemical synthesis using a thin sputtered ZnO seed layer. The optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL) emission are enhanced by the resonant coupling between the localized surface plasmons of Ag NPs. For optimized ZnO NRAs with embedded Ag NPs, the PL peak intensity is increased up to 4.1 times and the optical absorption of Ag NPs is maximized with dipole and quadrupole resonance peaks.