Preparation and optical properties of silica@Ag–Cu alloy core-shell composite colloids

The silica@Ag–Cu alloy core-shell composite colloids have been successfully synthesized by an electroless plating approach to explore the possibility of modifying the plasmon resonance at the nanoshell surface by varying the metal nanoshell composition for the first time. The surface plasmon resonance of the composite colloids increases in intensity and shifts towards longer, then shorter wavelengths as the Cu/Ag ratio in the alloy shell is increased. The variations in intensity of the surface plasmon resonance with the Cu/Ag ratio obviously affect the Raman bands of the silica colloid core. The report here may supply a new technique to effectively modify the surface plasmon resonance.