Plasmonic-Silver Sorets and Dielectric-Nd2O3 nanorods for Ultrasensitive Photonic Crystal-Coupled Emission

ABSTRACT Nanocavities forms the basis for plasmon-enhanced luminescence-based sensing technologies. Although surface plasmon-coupled emission platform has progressed with interdisciplinary applications, detrimental Ohmic losses in them hamper luminescence enhancement. An analogous micro-photonic platform, photonic crystal-coupled emission platform overcomes these limitations with Purcell–enhanced luminescence augmentation. Ag soret colloids presenting interfacial nanovoids offered amplified emission enhancements while coupling with Bloch surface waves in one-dimensional photonic crystal. A highly desirable synergistic approach with the use of plasmonic-silver nanoassembly (soret) and dielectric, high refractive index, Nd2O3 ‘Huygen’ sources (efficient forward light scatterers) have been comprehensively studied with added understanding from numerical calculations. A judicious synergy of metal and dielectric plasmonics with photonic crystal interface is demonstrated with new biophysicochemical insights. Fluorescence enhancements, directional and polarized emission obtained in excess of 1200-fold was utilized for attomolar sensing of xenobiotic Rhodamine B dye in integrated cavity ‘hotspots’ due to amplified electromagnetic field intensity.