Heat generation in plasmonic nanostructures: Influence of morphology

Using the Green’s dyadic method, we investigated numerically the heat generation in gold nanoparticles when illuminated at their plasmonic resonance. Two kinds of structures are discussed—colloidal-like nanoparticles and lithographic planar nanostructures—putting special emphasis on the influence of the object’s morphology at a constant metal volume. The mechanism of heating is explained and discussed by mapping the heating power density inside the structures. This work aims at giving an intuitive and original understanding of the relative heating efficiency of a wide set of morphologies and could stand for a basis recipe to design optimized plasmonic nanoheaters.