C60 as an active smart spacer material on silver thin film substrates for enhanced surface plasmon coupled emissionElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c4cp06090c

• Main Authors: Mulpur, Pradyumna, Podila, Ramakrishna, Ramamurthy, Sai Sathish, Kamisetti, Venkataramaniah, Rao, Apparao M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1463-9076; 1463-9084
• DOI: 10.1039/c4cp06090c

In this study, we present the use of C 60 as an active spacer material on a silver (Ag) based surface plasmon coupled emission (SPCE) platform. In addition to its primary role of protecting the Ag thin film from oxidation, the incorporation of C 60 facilitated the achievement of a 30-fold enhancement in the emission intensity of rhodamine B (RhB) fluorophore. The high signal yield was attributed to the unique π-π interactions between C 60 thin films and RhB, which enabled efficient transfer of energy of RhB emission to Ag plasmon modes. Furthermore, minor variations in the C 60 film thickness yielded large changes in the enhancement and angularity properties of the SPCE signal, which can be exploited for sensing applications. Finally, the low-cost fabrication process of the Ag-C 60 thin film stacks render C 60 based SPCE substrates ideal, for the economic and simplistic detection of analytes. We incorporated C 60 as an active spacer material in a SPCE platform resulting in 30-fold enhancement of fluorescence signal intensity.