COMMUNICATIONamong those success stories. [27][28][29][30] Nevertheless, most plasmonic devices are passive ones, where the plasmonic material functions as a component that is designed to "enhance" the optical processes. [31][32][33][34][35][36] There have been few reports on active fl exible plasmonic devices because of their complicated fabrication procedures. On the other hand, the rapid development of quantum optics and integrated optoelectronics renders the development of active fl exible devices inevitable, including active-matrix light-emitters, active optical links, [ 13,37,38 ] and especially plasmonic light sources that can play an imperative role in nanolasers. [39][40][41] In this regard, effective strategies to fabricate active fl exible plasmonic devices are strongly needed for the future development of nano-optical devices.In order to address this problem, we propose herein a facile method to prepare fl exible, plasmonic, gold nanorod arrays with strong multiphoton avalanche photoluminescence (MAPL), combining the advantages of a thin anodic alumina oxide (AAO) template and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The ordered gold nanorod arrays with a length of 105-160 nm and a diameter of 25 nm were grown on a very thin AAO template (ca. 1 µm) by electrochemical deposition, then immersed into the PDMS solution and fi nally subjected to thermal treatment to form a soft gold nanorod array/PDMS (GNA/PDMS) composite fi lm (see Experimental Section). Because of the inherent fl exibility of the solidifi ed PDMS and the thin AAO template (ca. 1 µm) the obtained GNA/PDMS fi lms also exhibit great fl exibility. Furthermore, owing to the strong plasmon interaction with adjacent nanorods in the Au array, these GNA/PDMS samples present outstanding MAPL characteristics, showing an avalanche slope as high as 14 and a threshold as low as 2.1 kW cm −2 (the lowest ever reported), which makes them very favorable for fabricating active fl exible light sources. In addition, the PDMS-embedded Au nanorod arrays can also greatly enhance the photoluminescence (PL) of quantum dots (QDs) around them by accelerating the QD emission rate via surfaceplasmon enhanced electric-fi eld emission. It is strongly believed that our fi ndings can provide a new avenue for the fabrication of novel fl exible plasmonic materials, which will be widely used in future photonic and optoelectronic devices.Figure 1 a is a top-view scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the used AAO template (the inset is 45° tilted). The uniform pore size and well-ordered array structure can clearly be seen. The average estimated pore diameter and lattice constant of the template were measured to be 25 and 110 nm, respectively. In order to further study the details of the AAO template as well as the implanted Au nanorods, a cross-sectional SEM Because of their considerable contribution to various optical applications, devices based on plasmonic materials have gained a high reputation in the research of nano-optics. [1][2][3][4][5][6] These devices can sustain collect...

2016):Surface plasmon-enhanced third-order optical non-linearity of silver triangular nanoplate, Journal of Modern Optics, ABSTRACT We have obtained Ag triangular nanoplates with plasmon resonance bands locating from 750 to 950 nm by wet chemical method. The third-order optical non-linear response property of Ag triangular nanoplate is investigated using z-scan technique. The incident wavelength dependence of χ (3) (the third-order susceptibility) shows the third-order nonlinear behaviour of Ag nanoplate is greatly modified by its plasmon resonance property, for the largest value of χ (3) is observed around the wavelength of plasmon resonant peak. Also, we find the maximum value of Ag nanoplate's χ (3) is 7.46 × 10 −11 esu, which is about 1-3 orders of magnitude larger than that of many other nanomaterials including Au nanorod, nanobipyramid and nanocube, as well as Ag nanosphere and nanodisc. This fact indicates the Ag triangular nanoplate is a kind of useful nonlinear material with larger third-order nonlinearity, showing great potentials in the explorations of functional non-linear devices.