Local Temperature Determination of Optically Excited Nanoparticles and Nanodots

Abstract

A thin film of Al(0.94)Ga(0.06)N embedded with Er(3+) ions is used as an optical temperature sensor to image the temperature profile around optically excited gold nanostructures of 40 nm gold nanoparticles and lithographically prepared gold nanodots. The sensor is calibrated to give the local temperature of a hot nanostructure by comparing the measured temperature change of a spherical 40 nm gold NP to the theoretical temperature change calculated from the absorption cross section. The calibration allows us to measure the temperature where a lithographically prepared gold nanodot melts, in agreement with the bulk melting point of gold, and the size of the nanodot, in agreement with SEM and AFM results. Also, we measure an enhancement in the Er(3+) photoluminescence due to an interaction of the NP and Er(3+). We use this enhancement to determine the laser intensity that melts the NP and find that there is a positive discontinuous temperature of 833 K. We use this discontinuous temperature to obtain an interface conductance of ∼10 MW/m(2)-K for the gold NP on our thermal sensor surface.

Probing and Controlling Photothermal Heat Generation in Plasmonic Nanostructures

“…As the fluorescent molecules increase in temperature, their rotational speed increases. By exciting the fluorophores and measuring their emission intensity in two opposite polarizations, the rotational speed and corresponding temperature can be Another existing far-field method uses a solid sensing material (AlGaN:Er 3+ ) placed near a thermoplasmonic particle to measure temperature 36 . In this scheme, an excitation source of a single wavelength is used to excite both a resonance in a plasmonic particle and the Er 3+ atoms in the sensing material.…”

Thermoplasmonics: Quantifying Plasmonic Heating in Single Nanowires

“…27 Thermal microscopy techniques have been demonstrated to probe temperature changes of small volumes including a thermographic phosphor technique, 28 scanning thermal microscopy, 29 and other methods. [30][31][32] This work combines electronic measurements with precise illumination to detect temperature changes isolated to the nanoscale volume of a single nanowire.…”

Cathodoluminescence from Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Nitride Thin Films Doped with Rare Earth and Transition Metals

“…A novel use of a-AlN:Ti thin films has been developed by Richardson and co-workers (Carlson, Khan et al 2011;Wang, Carlson et al 2011).…”

“…The photoluminescence spectrum of the Er peaks at 540 and 565 nm are used to determine the temperature of the film surrounding the substrate. From (Carlson, Khan et al 2011), with permission.…”