Article abstract


Nature Nanotechnology 2, 515 - 520 (2007)
Published online: 29 July 2007 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2007.216

Subject Category: Photonic structures and devices

Enhanced fluorescence emission from quantum dots on a photonic crystal surface

Nikhil Ganesh1,2, Wei Zhang1,2, Patrick C. Mathias1, Edmond Chow3, J. A. N. T. Soares4, Viktor Malyarchuk2, Adam D. Smith5 & Brian T. Cunningham1


Colloidal quantum dots display a wide range of novel optical properties that could prove useful for many applications in photonics. Here, we report the enhancement of fluorescence emission from colloidal quantum dots on the surface of two-dimensional photonic crystal slabs. The enhancement is due to a combination of high-intensity near fields and strong coherent scattering effects, which we attribute to leaky eigenmodes of the photonic crystal. By fabricating two-dimensional photonic crystal slabs that operate at visible wavelengths and engineering their leaky modes so that they overlap with the absorption and emission wavelengths of the quantum dots, we demonstrate that the fluorescence intensity can be enhanced by a factor of up to 108 compared with quantum dots on an unpatterned surface.

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  1. Nano Sensors Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 208 North Wright Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  3. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 208 North Wright Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  4. Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 104 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  5. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

Correspondence to: Brian T. Cunningham1 e-mail: bcunning@uiuc.edu

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