Organic-inorganic planar hybrid materials for spasers

Abstract

We strive to obtain highly fluorescent planar materials that may be used for the development of nanolasers based on localized plasmons. The promissing candidates for this purpose are materials consisting of mixtures of organic molecules, polymer, and silver nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles were preliminary deposited on the quartz substrates. These samples were characterized by SEM and absorption spectroscopy. Then, they were covered by the polymer/rhodamine and polymer/coumarin layers using either spin-coating or evaporation techniques and characterized by confocal luminescent microscopy and spectroscopy. As a result of the localized surface plasmon excitation, we observed the enhancement of the rhodamine and coumarine absorption in the near fields of silver nanoparticles. The fluorescence of the thin films of polymer activated by dyes molecules with silver nanoparticles was almost 20-fold more intense than that on the bare dielectric surfaces without silver nanoparticles. In the presence Ag nanoparticles and at increased intensities of excitation we found also slight narrowing of the luminescence spectrum of polymer/coumarin layers.