Modulation of plasmon transport between silver nanoparticles by a yellow fluorophore, tartrazine, is studied theoretically. The system is studied by combining a finite-difference time-domain Maxwell treatment of the electric field and the plasmons with a time-dependent parameterized method number 3 simulation of the tartrazine, resulting in an effective Maxwell∕Schrödinger (i.e., classical∕quantum) method. The modeled system has three linearly arranged small silver nanoparticles with a radius of 2 nm and a center-to-center separation of 4 nm; the molecule is centered between the second and third nanoparticles. We initiate an x-polarized current on the first nanoparticle and monitor the transmission through the system. The molecule rotates much of the x-polarized current into the y-direction and greatly reduces the overall transmission of x-polarized current.

We study a time-dependent semiempirical method to determine excitation energies, TD-PM3. This semiempirical method allows large molecules to be treated. A Linear-response Chebyshev approach yields the TD-PM3 spectrum very efficiently. Spectra and excitation energies were tested by comparing it with the results obtained using TD-DFT (Time Dependent-Density Functional Theory), using both small and large basis sets. They were also compared to PM3-CI, Time Dependent-Hartree Fock using the STO-3G basis set, and to experiment. TD-PM3 results generally match better the large-basis set calculations than the small-basis TD-DFT do; excitation energies are almost always accurate to within about 20% or less, except for a few small molecules. Accuracy improves as the molecules get larger.

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