Local temperature pattern in plasmonic gold nanoshell: tuning the heat generation

Under quasi-steady-state conditions, we investigated the photo-heat conversion in a gold nanoshell by calculating the local equilibrium temperature distribution. In a thinner gold shell, the hot spots take place near the poles of both shell-surrounding and core-shell interface, perpendicularly to the incident field. In a thicker gold shell, the hot spots only take place near the core-shell interface. The maximum local temperature also depends greatly on the core media and shell thickness. Optimal heat generation can be obtained with small core dielectric constant and thin shell thickness. The mechanism of this local heating distribution is explained by the local field enhancement that is induced by the plasmon coupling.