Probing the electromagnetic field of a 15-nanometre hotspot by single molecule imaging

Hu Cang, Anna Labno, Changgui Lu, Xiaobo Yin, Ming Liu, Christopher Gladden, Yongmin Liu and Xiang Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Hu Cang: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Anna Labno: NSF Nano Scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California
Changgui Lu: NSF Nano Scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California
Xiaobo Yin: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ming Liu: NSF Nano Scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California
Christopher Gladden: NSF Nano Scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California
Yongmin Liu: NSF Nano Scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California
Xiang Zhang: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Nature, 2011, vol. 469, issue 7330, 385-388

Abstract: Mapping electromagnetic hotspots It is well known that hotspots can appear on rough metallic surfaces exposed to light, where the incident light is concentrated on the nanometre scale to produce an intense electromagnetic field. This 'surface enhancement' effect can be used, for example, to detect molecules, because weak fluorescence signals are strongly enhanced by the hotspots. Such hotspots are associated with localized electromagnetic modes, caused by the randomness of the surface texture, but the detailed profile of the local electromagnetic field is so far unknown. Cang et al. now describe an ingenious experiment that exploits the Brownian motion of single molecules to probe the local field. They succeed in imaging the fluorescence enhancement profile of single hotspots on the surface of aluminium thin-film and silver nanoparticle clusters with accuracy down to 1 nm, and find that the field distribution in a hotspot follows an exponential decay.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09698 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:469:y:2011:i:7330:d:10.1038_nature09698

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09698

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().