| AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Thin Film | Thursday Sessions |
| Session TF-ThP |
| Session: | Aspects of Thin Films Poster Session |
| Presenter: | A. Karabchevsky, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel |
| Authors: | C. Khare, Leibniz-Institut of Surface Modification, Germany A. Karabchevsky, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel I. Abdulhalim, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel C. Patzig, Leibniz-Institut of Surface Modification, Germany B. Fuhrmann, Martin-Luther-University Halle, Germany B. Rauschenbach, Leibniz-Institut of Surface Modification, Germany |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Metallic nanophotonic structures demonstrate surfaced enhanced phenomena, thus find their application in device photonics. To facilitate the improvement in the already successful panoply of optical biosensors in general and in the field of water quality in particular, nano-photonic structures such as sculptured thin films (STF) can be used. The existence of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) was observed within metallic STFs. The glancing angle deposition technique (GLAD) by ion beam sputtering and electron beam evaporation was employed to sculpt thin films as a platform for surface enhanced fluorescence (SEF). The self shadowing mechanism is responsible for the growth of non-closed films which consist of needles grown in the direction of the incoming flux of the particles. This thin film deposition method, coupled with an appropriate substrate rotation scheme, enabled to deposit nanorods with less than 30° and greater than 80° inclination with respect to the substrate surface. A multitude of structures were prepared by depositing materials like Ag, Au and Si with GLAD on different substrates such as fused silica, Si(100), Si(100) coated with 15 nm Ti, and on nanosphere lithography pre-patterned substrates that consist of Au and Al nanodots in hexagonal arrangement. The reference (compact) thin films of each material were prepared with the vapor incidence parallel to the substrate normal.
With the integration of a fluorescence microscope with a spectrometer, the green Hg line at 546 nm was used for excitation in most of the SEF experiments and the emission was detected using the red filter at 590 nm. STFs spin coated with a Rhodamine 123 layer of thickness (30-50) nm were observed to show enhancement factors up to few tens. A higher degree of surface enhancement was observed with Ag nanorod STFs inserted in an aqueous solution of E. coli in comparison to corresponding dense Ag reference film.