Optical absorbance of colloidal suspensions of silver polyhedral nanoparticles

The optical absorption of colloidal suspensions made of silver nanoparticles with polyhedral shapes is studied experimentally and theoretically. The influence of the shape on the optical response is investigated by comparing the measured absorbance with theoretical results for icosahedral, decahedral, and cuboctahedral silver nanoparticles. The theoretical spectra are obtained within the discrete dipole approximation. We find that colloidal suspensions of silver nanoparticles with a small dispersion of size distribution show very few structural shapes.