The Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) properties of metal nanoparticles (MNP) have attracted wide attention. It has potential applications in solar cells, catalysis, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), fluorescence enhancement, biosensor, subwavelength imaging, random laser and many other fields [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7]. This mainly makes use of the excitation of the incident light to the free electrons on the surface of the MNP. When the frequency of the incident light is consistent with the oscillation frequency of the electrons on the MNP surface, the surface plasmon resonance will occur [
8,
9,
10]. The electric field on the surface of MNP will be greatly enhanced because of the resonance effect. The size and morphology of MNP have an important influence on the intensity of local electric field [
11,
12,
13]. Therefore, based on the characteristics of local electric field on the surface of MNP, it has important applications in plasmon mode and surface structure of materials [
14,
15].
Compared with the size of MNP, the morphology of MNP has a greater influence on the local electric field on the surface of MNP. They can affect the intensity of the resonance spectrum, the wavelength of the resonance peak and the width of the resonance spectrum. Studies have shown that MNP with tip structure (nano-stars, nano-flowers, etc.) form a larger local electric field on their surface, which is due to the hot spot effect at the tip position [
16,
17]. In addition, when two MNP are close to each other, hot spots will also be formed in their sub-wavelength gap region. Due to the coupling effect between MNP, the local electric field intensity is higher than that on the surface of single tip MNP [
18]. Similarly, when MNP and metal thin films are close to each other to form nanoparticle-on-mirror (NPOM) structures, hot spots with strong local electric field enhancement will appear in the gap space between them [
19,
20,
21,
22]. The electric field intensity in the gap region of the NPOM structure is greatly enhanced, at the same time, it is accompanied by the broadening of the resonant spectrum and the shift of the resonant wavelength. The preparation of NPOM structure does not depend on complex equipment, but also has good stability and tunability of resonance peak, which makes it have potential applications in many fields. At present, scholars' research on NPOM is mainly focused on the thickness of the dielectric layer between MNP and metal thin films. When the thickness of the dielectric layer is less than 4nm, there is only one gap mode in the NPOM structure. However, when the thickness is greater than 4nm, both gap mode and MNP mode will appear [
19]. The morphology of MNP has a great influence on the electric field resonance in gap space. For example, when M. Lequeux studies [
21] the NPOM structure composed of cylindrical nanoparticles, although the structural parameters of cylindrical nanoparticles are changed, the resonance peak wavelength in the gap region can only be controlled in a small range. Therefore, it can not be widely used in many application fields. And then, MNP with various morphologies (ellipse, mushroom, bowtie) have been proposed to study the optical enhancement properties of NPOM structures [
23,
24,
25]. Among them, the most representative one is that Jubb [
23] compared the NPOM SERS substrate composed of three kinds of ellipse, mushroom, bowtie nanoparticles. The results show that the Raman signal of ellipse nanoparticles is stronger than that of mushroom and bowtie nanoparticles. In fact, in addition to the thickness of the dielectric layer and the morphology of MNP, the polarization angle of the incident light also has an important influence on the local electric field optical enhancement properties of NPOM [
26,
27,
28]. Although the coupling effect of two particles and the NPOM structure can produce a strong local electric field in the gap region. However, in the preparation of the two structures, the subwavelength distance between the two adjacent MNP needs to be accurately controlled by physical method. It not only needs to rely on complex equipment, but also has high cost and takes a long time. The thickness of the dielectric layer in NPOM structure can be accurately controlled by spin coating method, and various morphologies of MNP can be prepared by chemical synthesis. To sum up, the NPOM structure based on MNP and metal thin films has a greater prospect.
In this paper, the NPOM structure composed of gold nano-ellipsoid particles (GENP) and gold thin film will be studied theoretically with the help of finite element method. We keep the size of the GENP unchanged. Firstly, we compare and analyze the distribution characteristics of the electric field intensity on the surface of the GENP in the homogeneous medium and the electric field intensity in the gap space of NPOM structure. Then it is analyzed that the NPOM structures of three kinds of dielectric layer thickness are affected by the polarization angle of incident light. For each constant thickness of dielectric layer, the variation characteristics of local electric field intensity in gap region are studied by changing six different polarization angles of incident light. Finally, the influence of the thickness of the dielectric layer of NPOM structure on the intensity and wavelength of the local electric field resonance peak in the gap region is further studied. NPOM structure has strong optical enhancement properties because of its coupling effect, which has potential applications in the fields of SERS, fluorescence enhancement, catalysis and so on.