Temperature- and roughness- dependent permittivity of annealed/unannealed gold films

Intrinsic absorption and subsequent heat generation have long been issues for metal-based plasmonics. Recently, thermo-plasmonics, which takes the advantage of such a thermal effect, is emerging as an important branch of plasmonics. However, although significant temperature increase is involved, characterization of metal permittivity at different temperatures and corresponding thermo-derivative are lacking. Here we measure gold permittivity from 300K to 570K, which the latter is enough for gold annealing. More than one order difference in thermo-derivative is revealed between annealed and unannealed films, resulting in a large variation of plasmonic properties. In addition, an unusual increase of imaginary permittivity after annealing is found. Both these effects can be attributed to the increased surface roughness incurred by annealing. Our results are valuable for characterizing extensively used unannealed nanoparticles, or annealed nanostructures, as building blocks in future thermo-nano-plasmonic systems.