Surface plasmons excited by the photoluminescence of organic nanofibers in hybrid plasmonic systems

Recent research on hybrid plasmonic systems has shown the existence of a loss channel for energy transfer between organic materials and plasmonic/metallic structured substrates. This work focuses on the exciton-plasmon coupling between para-Hexaphenylene (p-6P) organic nanofibers (ONFs) and surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in organic/dielectric/metal systems. We have transferred the organic p-6P nanofibers onto a thin silver film covered with a dielectric (silicon dioxide) spacer layer with varying thicknesses. Coupling is investigated by two-photon fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) and leakage radiation spectroscopy (LRS). Two-photon excitation allows us to excite the ONFs with near-infrared light and simultaneously avoids direct SPP excitation on the metal layer. We observe a strong dependence of fluorescence lifetime on the type of underlying substrate and on the morphology of the fibers. The experimental findings are complemented via finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modeling. The presented results lead to a better understanding and control of hybrid-mode systems, which are crucial elements in future low-loss energy transfer devices.

[1]  Frank Balzer,et al.  Analysis of nanostructured blue light-emitting p-6P films on mica , 2003, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[2]  Zygmunt Gryczynski,et al.  Surface Plasmon-Coupled Emission with Gold Films. , 2004, The journal of physical chemistry. B.

[3]  D. Koller,et al.  Leakage radiation microscopy of surface plasmon polaritons , 2008, 1002.0725.

[4]  E. Palik.  Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids , 1997 .

[5]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Dipole-assisted self-assembly of light-emitting p-nP needles on mica , 2001 .

[6]  S. Maier.  Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications , 2007 .

[7]  M. Schiek,et al.  Second-harmonic generation spectroscopy on organic nanofibers , 2009 .

[8]  Efficient roll-on transfer technique for well-aligned organic nanofibers. , 2011, Small.

[9]  J. Fiutowski,et al.  Leakage radiation spectroscopy of organic/dielectric/metal systems: influence of SiO2 on exciton-surface plasmon polariton interaction , 2014, Photonics Europe.

[10]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Surface plasmon polariton dispersion relation at organic/dielectric/metal interfaces , 2014 .

[11]  Horst-Günter Rubahn,et al.  Organic surface-grown nanowires for functional devices , 2013, Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society.

[12]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Optical waveguiding in individual nanometer-scale organic fibers , 2003 .

[13]  Thomas W. Ebbesen,et al.  Surface-plasmon circuitry , 2008 .

[14]  B. MacCraith,et al.  Experimental and theoretical evaluation of surface plasmon-coupled emission for sensitive fluorescence detection. , 2008, Journal of biomedical optics.

[15]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Morphological tuning of the plasmon dispersion relation in dielectric-loaded nanofiber waveguides. , 2013, Physical review letters.

[16]  S. Bozhevolnyi,et al.  Organic nanofiber-loaded surface plasmon-polariton waveguides. , 2011, Optics express.

[17]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Nanostructure induced changes in lifetime and enhanced second-harmonic response of organic-plasmonic hybrids , 2015 .

[18]  H. Rubahn,et al.  Efficient Exciton Diffusion and Resonance-Energy Transfer in Multilayered Organic Epitaxial Nanofibers , 2015, The journal of physical chemistry. C, Nanomaterials and interfaces.

[19]  Morten Madsen,et al.  Flexible organic solar cells including efficiency enhancing grating structures , 2013, Nanotechnology.

[20]  H Szmacinski,et al.  Fluorescence lifetime imaging. , 1992, Analytical biochemistry.