Influence of Plasmon Excitations in Au Nanoparticles upon Fluorescence and Photostability of Photosynthetic Complexes

Abstract

Fluorescence spectroscopy is applied to study the influence of plasmon excitations in spherical Au nanoparticles on the optical properties of chlorophyll-containing light-harvesting complexes. The separation between the two nanostructures is controlled via silica layer with varied thickness. We observe strong increase of the emission intensity for a 12-nm-thick spacer and the increase is accompanied with shortening of the fluorescence lifetime, which allows us to separate contributions of absorption and emission rate enhancement. At the same time we find an increase of photobleaching. These findings are interpreted as a result of spectral overlap between plasmon resonance and chlorophyll fluorescence.

Photostability of gold nanoparticles with different shapes: the role of Ag clusters

“…Large developments of shape control enable nowadays to synthesize nanoparticles of non-spherical shapes, such as rods, prisms, cubes, cuboctahedrons, octahedrons, decahedrons, icosahedrons, truncated octahedrons, etc. Several studies about the stability under photoirradiation of gold nanoparticles have also been reported [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] . Synthesis of anisotropic structures such as gold nanorods and nanowires were widely studied since Murphy's 20 and El-Sayed's 21-23 pioneering works, and has attracted much attention due to the fine-tuning of light absorption from visible to near infrared just by changing the aspect ratios (length/diameter).…”

“…8,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] Several studies on the stability under photo-irradiation of gold nanoparticles have also been reported. [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] For example, Al-Sherbini et al 37 studied the effect of UV-light on gold nanorods with different aspect ratios in water/glycerol mixtures. Recently, we have shown that small Ag clusters can not only catalyze the formation of gold nanorods, 6 but also promote the photocorrosion of Au nanowires by low intensity UV irradiation.…”

Extraordinary Optical Transmission through Single Sub-Wavelength Slot Nano Antennas

“…Even though surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), being the first applications of surface Plasmon metallic nanostructures, was discovered in the 1970s [2] [3], the field of plasmonics started to rapidly spread in the early 2000s. Around then it was exhibited that metallic nanowires can guide light well below the diffraction limit [4]; a simple thin film of metal can serve as an optical lens [5]; and sliver films with nano-scale holes show extraordinarily optical transmission (EOT) [6] The most essential applications in the plasmonics field appear to depend on one key property of engineered metallic structures that is the ability to guide and concentrate light at the nano-scale [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. It is envisaged that plasmonics, combined with nano photonics, has the potential to provide ultra-small optoelectronic components having higher speeds and greater bandwidths.…”

Entangled light from bimodal optical nanoantennas

“…The resulting huge values of coupling between the quantum emitters and the nanoantenna via electromagnetic fields can be exploited, e.g. to boost molecular fluorescence [7][8][9], to enhance dipole-dipole interactions between multiple emitters [10,11], or to create entanglement between them [12,13]. The properties of radiated light can be modified as well, e.g.…”