Latest publication : photokinetic rates inside nanoapertures

14 Juillet 2007 , Rédigé par JW Publié dans #Recent research work

So finally, it got accepted in J. Phys. Chem. C and is now available on the journal homepage following this link. In this paper, we resolve the photokinetics alteration of fluorescent Rh6G molecules diffusing in a water-glycerol mixture within a single 150nm aperture milled in an opaque aluminum film.

We describe the physics behind the observed overall 15 fold enhancement of the average fluorescence rate per molecule. The fluorescence rate enhancement is clearly seen from the data displayed on Fig 3A, and was already reported to some extent in earlier works. The novelty in this paper is that we apply a procedure based on FCS and lifetime measurements to resolve the different molecular transition rates and their alteration brought by a nanoaperture. This procedure is very close to the one introduced by Jerker Widengren and coworkers in Ref. [19] and [20]. This procedure is broadly adaptable to a wide range of nanostructures.