Enhancement of light depolarization by random ensembles of titania-based low-dimensional nanoparticles

Depolarization peculiarities of the light scattered by the random ensembles of titania-based low-dimensional nanoparticles are studied during the experiments with aqueous suspensions of potassium polytitanate nanoplatelets and nanoribbons. The obtained experimental results are compared with the theoretical data obtained for the random systems of oblate and prolate flattened ellipsoidal nanoparticles with various values of the shape factor and dielectric function corresponding the parent material (titanium dioxide). The possibility to recover the effective dielectric function from the depolarization ratio spectra using the ellipsoidal shape model is considered. Ellipsoidal approximation is appropriate for both the nanoplatelets and nanoribbons in the spectral region for which the real part of nanoparticles permittivity is sufficiently negative and the near-resonant excitation of longitudinal mode of charge oscillations in nanoparticles occurs. Also, ellipsoidal approximation is appropriate for nanoplatelets in the region of sufficiently po sitive real part of permittivity but gives remarkably underestimated values of the depolarization ratio for nanoribbons in the region. This is presumably caused by considerable difference in the light-induced charge distributions for nanoribbons and prolate flattened ellipsoidal nanoparticles with the decreasing efficiency in longitudinal mode excitation. The recovered values of nanoparticle permittivity exhibit the red shift with respect to the permittivity values of the parent material due to its modification in the course of nanoparticles synthesis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.