Gap-plasmon-enhanced gold nanoparticle photoluminescence is studied experimentally at the single-particle level. The photoluminescence spectra of gold nanoparticles on an Al 2 O 3 -coated gold film under both 532 and 633 nm excitation show a clear peak near the measured gap-plasmon resonance wavelength. Comparing the collected emission spectrum with that from a gold reference film under 633 nm excitation, a peak photoluminescence enhancement factor of 28 000 is observed. The spectral shape and absolute magnitude of the enhancement factors for both excitation wavelengths are reproduced using numerical calculations without the use of any free parameters. The photoluminescence enhancement is explained in terms of a gap-mode-enhanced e−h pair generation rate and a wavelength-dependent enhancement of the emission efficiency.

Isolating and in situ profiling the heterogeneous molecular phenotype of circulating tumor cells are of great significance for clinical cancer diagnosis and personalized therapy. Herein, an on-chip strategy is proposed that combines size-based microfluidic cell isolation with multiple spectrally orthogonal surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) analysis for in situ profiling of cell membrane proteins and identification of cancer subpopulations. With the developed microfluidic chip, tumor cells are sieved from blood on the basis of size discrepancy. To enable multiplex phenotypic analysis, three kinds of spectrally orthogonal SERS aptamer nanovectors are designed, providing individual cells with composite spectral signatures in accordance with surface protein expression. Next, to statistically demultiplex the complex SERS signature and profile the cellular proteomic phenotype, a revised classic least square algorithm is employed to obtain the 3D phenotypic information at single-cell resolution. Combined with categorization algorithm partial least square discriminate analysis, cells from different human breast cancer subtypes can be reliably classified with high sensitivity and selectivity. The results demonstrate that this platform can identify cancer subtypes with the spectral information correlated to the clinically relevant surface receptors, which holds great potential for clinical cancer diagnosis and precision medicine.

A compact and nanometric surface plasmon polariton (SPP) band-pass filter based on a rectangular ring resonator composed of metal–insulator–metal waveguides is proposed. Using the finite difference time domain method, the effects of the structure parameters on the transmission characteristics of this SPP band-pass filter are analysed in detail. The results show that the proposed SPP filter has narrow transmission peaks and the corresponding resonance wavelengths can be linearly tuned by altering the resonator's cavity length. Moreover, the transmission ratios of the pass bands can be tuned by changing the coupling gaps between the input/output MIM waveguides and the resonator. Also the metal loss and dispersion effects on the filter responses are included. The simple band-pass SPP filter is very promising for high-density SPP waveguide integrations.

ARTICLE This journal isThe effect of nanoscale surface roughness on the surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles on thermally evaporated gold films is investigated experimentally and numerically. Single-particle scattering spectra obtained from 80 nm diameter gold particles on a gold film show significant particle-to-particle variation of the peak scattering wavelength of ±28 nm. The experimental results are compared with numerical simulations of gold nanoparticles positioned on representative rough gold surfaces, modeled based on atomic force microscopy measurements. The predicted spectral variation and average resonance wavelength show good agreement with the measured data. The study shows that surface roughness can have a significant impact on the spectral performance of particlebased plasmonic devices.

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