Long-range plasmon-assisted energy transfer over doped graphene

TL;DR

This paper shows that doped graphene's longitudinal plasmons can enable highly efficient, long-range energy transfer between quantum dots, surpassing traditional F"{o}rster transfer by up to 10,000 times.

Contribution

It provides an analytical model and numerical analysis demonstrating plasmon-assisted energy transfer over distances up to 1 μm in doped graphene.

Findings

Energy transfer efficiency can be enhanced by up to 10,000 times.

Long-range transfer occurs over distances up to 1 μm.

Plasmon-assisted transfer surpasses F"{o}rster's mechanism significantly.

Abstract

We demonstrate that longitudinal plasmons in doped monolayer graphene can mediate highly efficient long-range energy transfer between nearby fluorophores, e.g., semiconductor quantum dots. We derive a simple analytical expression for the energy transfer efficiency that incorporates all the essential processes involved. We perform numerical calculations of the transfer efficiency for a pair of PbSe quantum dots near graphene for inter-fluorophore distances of up to 1 $\mu$m and find that the plasmon-assisted long-range energy transfer can be enhanced by up to a factor of $\sim10^4$ relative to the F\"{o}rster's transfer in vacuum.