Illuminating Disorder: Optical Properties of Complex Plasmonic Assemblies

The optical properties of disordered plasmonic nanoparticle assemblies can be continuously tuned through the structural organization and composition of their colloidal building blocks. However, progress in the design and experimental realization of these materials has been limited by challenges associated with controlling and characterizing disordered assemblies and predicting their optical properties. This perspective discusses integrated studies of experimental assembly of disordered optical materials, such as doped metal oxide nanocrystal gels and metasurfaces, with electromagnetic computations on large-scale simulated structures. The simulations prove vital for connecting experimental parameters to disordered structural motifs and optical properties, revealing structure-property relations that inform design choices. Opportunities are identified for optimizing optical property designs for disordered materials using computational inverse methods and tools from machine learning.