Fluorescence quenching near small metal nanoparticles

Abstract

We develop a microscopic model for fluorescence of a molecule (or semiconductor quantum dot) near a small metal nanoparticle. When a molecule is situated close to metal surface, its fluorescence is quenched due to energy transfer to the metal. We perform quantum-mechanical calculations of energy transfer rates for nanometer-sized Au nanoparticles and find that non-local and quantum-size effects significantly enhance dissipation in metal as compared to those predicted by semiclassical electromagnetic models. However, the dependence of transfer rates on molecule's distance to metal nanoparticle surface, $d$, is significantly weaker than the $d^{-4}$ behavior for flat metal surface with a sharp boundary predicted by previous calculations within random phase approximation.

7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• On-command enhancement of single molecule fluorescence using a gold nanoparticle as an optical nano-antenna
• Diamondoid Molecules
• Surface-enhanced Raman scattering and fluorescence near metal nanoparticles
• Unified treatment of fluorescence and Raman scattering processes near metal surfaces

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Coulomb and quenching effects in small nanoparticle-based spasers
• Spaser quenching by off-resonant plasmon modes
• Collective eigenstates of emission in an N-entity heterostructure and the evaluation of its Green tensors and self-energy components
• Tailoring a Molecule's Optical Absorbance Using Surface Plasmonics
• Hydrodynamic effects on the energy transfer from dipoles to metal slab