Plasmon-induced broadband fluorescence enhancement on Al-Ag bimetallic substrates

Surface enhanced fluorescence (SEF) utilizes the local electromagnetic environment to enhance fluorescence from the analyte on the surface of a solid substrate with nanostructures. While the detection sensitivity of SEF is improved with the development of nano-techniques, detection of multiple analytes by SEF is still a challenge due to the compromise between the high enhancing efficiency and broad response bandwidth. In this article, a high-efficiency SEF substrate with broad response bandwidth is obtained by embedding silver in an aluminum film to produce additional bonding and anti-bonding hybridized states. The bimetallic film is fabricated by ion implantation and the ion energy and fluence are tailored to control subsurface location of the fabricated bimetallic nanostructures. The process circumvents the inherent limit of aluminum materials and extends the plasmon band of aluminum from deep UV to visible range. Fluorescence from different dyes excited by 310 nm to 555 nm is enhanced by up to 11 folds on the single bimetallic film and the result is theoretically confirmed by finite-difference time-domain simulations. This work demonstrates that bimetallic film can be used for optical detection of multiple analytes.