C60 as an active smart spacer material on silver thin film substrates for enhanced surface plasmon coupled emission

Surface Plasmon-Assisted Fluorescence Enhancing and Quenching: From Theory to Application

The integration of surface plasmon resonance and fluorescence yields a multiaspect improvement in surface fluorescence sensing and imaging, leading to a paradigm shift of surface plasmon-assisted fluorescence techniques, for example, surface plasmon enhanced field fluorescence spectroscopy, surface plasmon coupled emission (SPCE), and SPCE imaging. This Review aims to characterize the unique optical property with a common physical interpretation and diverse surface architecture-based measurements. The fundamental electromagnetic theory is employed to comprehensively unveil the fluorophore-surface plasmon interaction, and the associated surface-modification design is liberally highlighted to balance the surface plasmon-induced fluorescence-enhancement efforts and the surface plasmon-caused fluorescence-quenching effects. In particular, all types of surface structures, for example, silicon, carbon, protein, DNA, polymer, and multilayer, are systematically interrogated in terms of component, thickness, stiffness, and functionality. As a highly interdisciplinary and expanding field in physics, optics, chemistry, and surface chemistry, this Review could be of great interest to a broad readership, in particular, among physical chemists, analytical chemists, and in surface-based sensing and imaging studies.

Chemiplasmonics for high-throughput biosensors

Background

The sensitivity of ELISA for biomarker detection can be significantly increased by integrating fluorescence with plasmonics. In surface-plasmon-coupled emission, the fluorophore emission is generally enhanced through the so-called physical mechanism due to an increase in the local electric field. Despite its fairly high enhancement factors, the use of surface-plasmon-coupled emission for high-throughput and point-of-care applications is still hampered due to the need for expensive focusing optics and spectrometers.

Methods

Here, we describe a new chemiplasmonic-sensing paradigm for enhanced emission through the molecular interactions between aromatic dyes and C₆₀ films on Ag substrates.

Results

A 20-fold enhancement in the emission from rhodamine B-labeled biomolecules can be readily elicited without quenching its red color emission. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate two model bioassays using: 1) the RhB–streptavidin and biotin complexes in which the dye was excited using an inexpensive laser pointer and the ensuing enhanced emission was recorded by a smartphone camera without the need for focusing optics and 2) high-throughput 96-well plate assay for a model antigen (rabbit immunoglobulin) that showed detection sensitivity as low as 6.6 pM.

Conclusion

Our results show clear evidence that chemiplasmonic sensors can be extended to detect biomarkers in a point-of-care setting through a smartphone in simple normal incidence geometry without the need for focusing optics. Furthermore, chemiplasmonic sensors also facilitate high-throughput screening of biomarkers in the conventional 96-well plate format with 10–20 times higher sensitivity.

Ag-CNT Architectures for Attomolar Dopamine Detection and 100-Fold Fluorescence Enhancements with Cellphone-Based Surface Plasmon-Coupled Emission Platform

We report cellphone-based detection of dopamine with attomolar sensitivity in clinical samples with the use of a surface plasmon-coupled emission (SPCE) platform. To this end, silver-coated carbon nanotubes were used as spacer and cavity materials on SPCE substrates to obtain up to 100-fold fluorescence enhancements. The presence of silver on the carbon nanotubes helped to overcome fluorescence quenching arising due to π-π interactions between the carbon nanotube and rhodamine 6G. The competing adsorption of dopamine versus rhodamine 6G on graphene oxide was utilized to develop this sensing platform.

Flexible Ag-C60 nano-biosensors based on surface plasmon coupled emission for clinical and forensic applications

The relatively low sensitivity of fluorescence detection schemes, which are mainly limited by the isotropic nature of fluorophore emission, can be overcome by utilizing surface plasmon coupled emission (SPCE). In this study, we demonstrate directional emission from fluorophores on flexible Ag-C60 SPCE sensor platforms for point-of-care sensing, in healthcare and forensic sensing scenarios, with at least 10 times higher sensitivity than traditional fluorescence sensing schemes. Adopting the highly sensitive Ag-C60 SPCE platform based on glass and novel low-cost flexible substrates, we report the unambiguous detection of acid-fast Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) bacteria at densities as low as 20 Mtb mm(-2); from non-acid-fast bacteria (e.g., E. coli and S. aureus), and the specific on-site detection of acid-fast sperm cells in human semen samples. In combination with the directional emission and high-sensitivity of SPCE platforms, we also demonstrate the utility of smartphones that can replace expensive and cumbersome detectors to enable rapid hand-held detection of analytes in resource-limited settings; a much needed critical advance to biosensors, for developing countries.

Earth Abundant Iron-Rich N-Doped Graphene Based Spacer and Cavity Materials for Surface Plasmon-Coupled Emission Enhancements

We demonstrate for the first time the use of Fe-based nanoparticles on N-doped graphene as spacer and cavity materials and study their plasmonic effect on the spontaneous emission of a radiating dipole. Fe-C-MF was produced by pyrolizing FeOOH and melamine formaldehyde precursor on graphene, while Fe-C-PH was produced by pyrolizing the Fe-phenanthroline complex on graphene. The use of the Fe-C-MF composite consisting of Fe-rich crystalline phases supported on N-doped graphene presented a spacer material with 116-fold fluorescence enhancements. On the other hand, the Fe-C-PH/Ag based cavity resulted in an 82-fold enhancement in Surface Plasmon-Coupled Emission (SPCE), with high directionality and polarization of Rhodamine 6G (Rh6G) emission owing to Casimir and Purcell effects. The use of a mobile phone as a cost-effective fluorescence detection device in the present work opens up a flexible perspective for the study of different nanomaterials as tunable substrates in cavity mode and spacer applications.

Purcell factor based understanding of enhancements in surface plasmon-coupled emission with DNA architectures

Tuning the Purcell factor with DNA architectures to realize >130-fold fluorescence enhancements in surface plasmon-coupled emission.