Tailoring of plasmonic functionalized metastructures to enhance local heating release

Plasmonic nanoheaters are reported that produce a significant local heating when excited by a 532 nm wavelength focused laser beam. A significant temperature increase derives from the strong confinement of electric field enabled by the specific arrangement of Au nanodisks constituting the nanoheater. The thermal response is much more sensitive when layering the gold nanoheaters by a thick layer of doped polymer, reaching a temperature variation of more than 250 °C. The modulation of the excitation by a chopper enables the fine control of the thermal response with a measured maximum temperature variation of about 60 °C in a single period. These intriguing features can be efficiently exploited for the design of novel systems finding application in nano medicine and nano chemistry.