title: Plasmonic-enhanced molecular fluorescence within isolated bowtie nano-apertures.
abstract: We report experimental behaviors of polarization-dependent, plasmonic-enhanced molecular fluorescence within isolated bowtie nano-apertures (BNAs) milled in aluminum films. BNAs provide efficient control of the fluorescent count rate per molecule and the decay lifetime of the molecules and provide an effective detection volume at the nanometer scale by tuning either the excitation light polarization or the BNA size. Interestingly, large BNAs (>300 nm) present high plasmonic-enhanced fluorescence efficiency and can simultaneously confine the detection volume below the subdiffraction limit. Numerical simulations were performed that agreed qualitatively with the experimental results. The BNAs have potential applications, especially for single-molecule biological analysis.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and Department of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Guowei
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Wenqiang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Tianyue
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Song
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yue
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Qihuang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000535:Aluminum / Q000737:chemistry; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence
chemical_list: D000535:Aluminum