Tunable Fano resonances in heterogenous Al–Ag nanorod dimers

We theoretically investigate the plasmonic coupling in heterogenous Al–Ag nanorod dimers. A pronounced Fano dip is found in the extinction spectrum produced by the destructive interference between the bright dipole mode from a short Al nanorod and the dark quadrupole mode from a long Ag nanorod nearby. This Fano resonance can be widely tuned in both wavelength and amplitude by varying the rod dimensions and end geometry, the separation distance and the local dielectric environment. The Al–Ag heterogeneous nanorod dimer shows a high sensitivity to the surrounding environment with a local surface plasmon resonance figure of merit of 7.0, which enables its promising applications in plasmonic sensing and detection.