Upconversion fluorescence from Lanthanide-doped nanocrystals has attracted widespread interests because of its greatly potential applications in various fields, such as photonic crystal lasers, material science, biological therapy, and so on. However, the relatively low quantum yield (typically < 5%) is the major limitation for upconversion nanocrystals. Meanwhile, in addition to the chemical methods, plasmonic structures have been adopted as another strategy to improve the radiation efficiency and control the relaxation process of the upcovnersion nanocrystals. We designed the anti-symmetric split ring resonators with various periods and the fishnet structures. The surface plasmon resonance peaks of the structure shift as the periods varies. For example, in a multi-layered plamsonic metasurface with the period of 250nm, both the electric and magnetic modes could be generated simultaneously when excited by the incident light with proper polarization. This plasmonic structure provides two different channels for the enhancement of upconversion fluorescence. The resonance peak of 650nm is magnetic resonance mode, while the peak of 980nm is electric resonance mode. The resonance peak of 980nm coincides with the absorption band of the Lanthanide-dopoed nanocrystal, and the peak of 650nm matches with its emission band. We found that the upconversion fluorescence intensity could be enhanced more than 10 times when the electric resonance frequency of the metasurface matches with the absorption band of the upconversion nanocrystals, while the magnetic mode overlaps with its emission band. This is due to the local density of optical states was significantly enhanced by the plasmonic metasurface. The detailed results and mechanism will be discussed.
Nanotechnology has been developed for decades and many interesting optical properties have been demonstrated. However, the major hurdle for the further development of nanotechnology depends on finding economic ways to fabricate such nanostructures in large-scale. Here, we demonstrate how to achieve low-cost fabrication using nanosphere-related techniques, such as Nanosphere Lithography (NSL) and Nanospherical-Lens Lithography (NLL).
NSL is a low-cost nano-fabrication technique that has the ability to fabricate nano-triangle arrays that cover a very large area. NLL is a very similar technique that uses polystyrene nanospheres to focus the incoming ultraviolet light and exposure the underlying photoresist (PR) layer. PR hole arrays form after developing. Metal nanodisk arrays can be fabricated following metal evaporation and lifting-off processes. Nanodisk or nano-ellipse arrays with various sizes and aspect ratios are routinely fabricated in our research group.
We also demonstrate we can fabricate more complicated nanostructures, such as nanodisk oligomers, by combining several other key technologies such as angled exposure and deposition, we can modify these methods to obtain various metallic nanostructures. The metallic structures are of high fidelity and in large scale. The metallic nanostructures can be transformed into semiconductor nanostructures and be used in several green technology applications.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.