Magnetic tuning of plasmonic excitation of gold nanorods.

By using gold nanorods as an example, we report the dynamic and reversible tuning of the plasmonic property of anisotropically shaped colloidal metal nanostructures by controlling their orientation using external magnetic fields. The magnetic orientational control enables instant and selective excitation of the plasmon modes of AuNRs through the manipulation of the field direction relative to the directions of incidence and polarization of light.