The interaction of light with silver nanoparticle arrays can in some cases produce mixed plasmonic/photonic bands that have extremely narrow (<1 meV) line shapes in extinction and scattering. In this paper we extend computational electrodynamics results of a recent communication [S. Zou, N. Janel, and G. C. Schatz, J. Chem. Phys. 120, 10871 (2004)] where this effect was first described to study how these narrow bands are influenced by a number of structural factors, and to determine how useful these arrays might be for sensing applications. Included are studies of the effect of disorder in the array structure on plasmon intensity and width, of the effect of orientation of the array relative to the polarization and propagation direction of the incident light, and of the effect of particle shape (comparing results for silver spheres and cylindrical disks). Our results show that the narrow lines are remarkably robust to array disorder, but vacancy defects can easily destroy the effect. The narrowest lines are associated with one dimensional arrays in which both polarization and wave vectors are perpendicular to the array axis. For two dimensional arrays, the narrowest lines are associated with the wave vector perpendicular to the plane of the array and polarization in the plane. Arrays composed of oblate cylinders generate more intense and more redshifted plasmon/photonic peaks than do prolate or spherical particles under comparable conditions. Finally, for sensing applications in which analyte binding is determined by the plasmon wavelength shift associated with change in the surface refractive index, we show that the arrays have greater sensitivity than isolated nanoparticles.
(c) 2004 American Institute of Physics.