AVS 47th International Symposium
    Processing at the Nanoscale/NANO 6 Thursday Sessions
       Session NS+NANO6-ThM

Paper NS+NANO6-ThM8
Noble Metal Nanoparticles in Polymeric Thin Films

Thursday, October 5, 2000, 10:40 am, Room 302

Session: Nanostructured Materials
Presenter: P.G. Van Patten, Ohio University
Authors: M.K. Chilton, Ohio University
P.G. Van Patten, Ohio University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Recent results obtained in our laboratory and elsewhere have demonstrated the possibility of using noble metal nanoparticles to enhance the emissive response from phosphor materials by more than an order of magnitude. We have employed electrostatically-grown polymer-based thin films as model systems for a series of experiments on these light-emitting nanocomposites. The fabrication and characterization of these model thin films will be described in detail along with spectroscopic results from the phosphor films. The enhancement effect has thus far only been observed in trivalent lanthanide ions. Experimental results suggest that the enhancement mechanism is related to the field focussing properties of the nanoparticles. Localized field enhancement apparently leads to the introduction of odd parity terms into the transition matrix element for photoabsorption. Interestingly, the rate of spontaneous emission from the ions are not observed to change as a result of the nanoparticles’ presence. A detailed hypothesis for the mechanism will be presented consistent with existing photophysical evidence. The implications of the enhancement phenomenon for device development will also be discussed.