Upconversion materials have attracted much interest for biomedical applications. However, a wide-spread use requires a much improved upconversion efficiency for which plasmonic nanostructures offer a highly promising route. This paper presents the latest development in plasmonic nanostructures coupled with upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs). First, a demonstration of over 1000x enhancement using a metal-insulator-metal architecture will be presented. Additionally, UCNP-gold nanostructure was conjugated with antibody to epidermal growth factor to target bladder cancer cells. We have demonstrated highly selective cell killing by optoporation-aided chemotherapy.
In order to overcome the low quantum yield of upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs), plasmonic nanostructures have been used due to their strongly modified local E-field. However, the complex nature of plasmon-upconversion interaction by field enhancement and luminescence quenching is not well appreciated in general. Here, we present a spectroscopic study on the interaction between NaYF4:Yb3+,Er3+ UCNPs and gold nanostructures. The luminescence is monitored as the nanostructure geometry is varied. The interplay between the positive effect of local field enhancement and the negative effect of luminescence quenching is carefully analyzed by numerical simulations and rate equation analysis.
Chalcogenides are a material platform for infrared nonlinear optics with high transmission and nonlinearity, but are susceptible to changes in bond structure during fabrication. These changes affect both the linear and nonlinear optical properties of the chalcogenide. We analyze the structure and optical properties of thermally evaporated and annealed Ge28Sb12Se60 to determine why these changes occur and how they can be rectified. We observe that thermally evaporated Ge28Sb12Se60 has an increased selenium content, increased bandgap, increased concentration of heteropolar bonds, and lower third order nonlinearity. We further observe that annealing above the glass transition temperature reduced the concentration of heteropolar bonds and increased the third order nonlinearity by a factor of four.
Nanowires with metallic or dielectric materials have received considerable interest in many research fields for optical and optoelectronic devices. Metal nanowires have been extensively studied due to the high optical and electrical properties and dielectric nanowires are also investigated owing to the multiple scattering of light. In this research, we report optical meta-films of alumina nanowire arrays with nanometer scale diameters by fabrication method of self-aggregate process. The aluminum oxide nanowires are transparent from ultraviolet to near infrared wavelength regions and array structures have strong diffusive light scattering. We integrate those optical properties from the material and structure, and produce efficient an optical haze meta-film which has high transparency and transmission haze at the same time. The film enhances efficiencies of optical devices by applying on complete products, such as organic solar cells and LEDs, because of an expanded optical path length and light trapping in active layers maintaining high transparency. On the other hands, the meta-film also produces solar steam by sputtering metal on the aluminum oxide nanowire arrays. The nanowire array film with metal coating exhibits ultrabroadband light absorption from ultraviolet to mid-infrared range which is caused by nanofocusing of plasmons. The meta-film efficiently produces water steam under the solar light by metal-coated alumina arrays which have high light-to-heat conversion efficiency. The design, fabrication, and evaluation of our light management platforms and their applications of the meta-films will be introduced.
KEYWORDS: Gold, Absorption, Organic photovoltaics, Solar cells, Thin film solar cells, Plasmonics, Metals, Finite-difference time-domain method, Optical properties, Solar energy
The fabrication method of plasmonic nanodots on ITO or nc-ZnO substrate has been developed to improve the efficiency of organic thin film solar cells. Nanoscale metallic nanodots arrays are fabricated by anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template mask which can have different structural parameters by varying anodization conditions. In this paper, the structural parameters of metallic nanodots, which can be controlled by the diverse structures of AAO template mask, are investigated to enhance the optical properties of organic thin film solar cells. It is found that optical properties of the organic thin film solar cells are improved by finding optimization values of the structural parameters of the metallic nanodot array.
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