In this work, the impact of metallic and dielectric conducting
substrates, gold and indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass, on the whispering
gallery modes (WGMs) of semiconductor π-conjugated polymer microspheres
is investigated. Hyperspectral mapping was performed to obtain the
excitation-position-dependent emission spectra of the microspheres.
Substrate-dependent quenching of WGMs sensitive to mode polarization
was observed and explained. On a glass substrate, both transverse-electric
(TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) WGMs are quenched due to frustrated
total internal reflection. On a gold substrate, however, only the
TM WGMs are allowed in symmetry to leak into surface plasmons. An
atomically flat gold substrate with subwavelength slits was used to
experimentally verify the leakage of WGMs into the surface plasmon
polaritons (SPPs). This work provides insight into the damping mechanisms
of WGMs in microspheres on metallic and dielectric substrates.
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