Giant increase in the metal-enhanced fluorescence of organic molecules in nanoporous alumina templates and large molecule-specific red/blue shift of the fluorescence peak

TL;DR

This study reveals a significant size-dependent enhancement of organic molecule fluorescence in nanoporous alumina, with large molecule-specific spectral shifts, enabling highly sensitive bio-chemical sensing applications.

Contribution

It uncovers a novel size dependence of metal-enhanced fluorescence in nanoporous templates and demonstrates molecule-specific spectral shifts due to built-in electric fields.

Findings

Fluorescence intensity increases orders of magnitude in nanoporous alumina.

Inverse super-linear relation between nanowire diameter and fluorescence enhancement.

Molecule-specific red/blue shifts enable precise optical detection.

Abstract

The fluorescence of organic fluorophore molecules is enhanced when they are placed in contact with certain metals (Al, Ag, Cu, Au, etc.) whose surface plasmon waves couple into the radiative modes of the molecules and increase the radiative efficiency. Here, we report a hitherto unknown size dependence of this metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF) effect in the nanoscale. When the molecules are deposited in nanoporous anodic alumina films with exposed aluminum at the bottom of the pores, they form organic nanowires standing on aluminum nanoparticles whose plasmon waves have much larger amplitudes. This increases the MEF strongly, resulting in several orders of magnitude increase in the fluorescence intensity of the organic fluorophores. The increase in intensity shows an inverse super-linear dependence on nanowire diameter because the nanowires also act as plasmonic 'waveguides' that concentrate the plasmons and increase the coupling of the plasmons with the radiative modes of the molecules. Furthermore, if the nanoporous template housing the nanowires has built-in electric fields due to space charges, a strong molecule-specific red- or blue-shift is induced in the fluorescence peak owing to a renormalization of the dipole moment of the molecule. This can be exploited to detect minute amounts of target molecules in a mixture using their optical signature (fluorescence) despite the presence of confounding background signals. It can result in a unique new technology for bio- and chemical-sensing.