recent research work

Meet me at this conference : Plasmonics / The Science And Engineering Of Nanoscale Optics, June 13-18, 2010 Colby College, Waterville, ME.

Our endoscope system to detect and analyse single molecule fluorescence has recently been highlighted by the CNRS Institute for Engineering and Systems Sciences. See the article here. (French only, sorry). Another description (in English) can be found in a previous article on this blog.

Following in SPIE Photonics West conference in last January, we have a second proceedings paper published. This one corresponds to an invited contribution.

Enhanced fluorescence from metal nanoapertures: physical characterizations and biophotonic applications
J. Wenger, H. Aouani, D. Gérard, S. Blair, T.W. Ebbesen and H. Rigneault Proc. of SPIE, Proc. SPIE Vol. 7577, pp.75770J (2010)

A personal reprint can be found here.

The major contribution of this proceedings paper is to provide with the most general figures to predict the fluorescence enhancement factors by nanoapertures for almost every kind of fluorescent molecule. This knowledge is essential to discuss the ability to detect low-quantum yield species.

We also report of the following new results :

- detailed physical characterization of this phenomenon for apertures milled in gold and aluminum

-  first demonstration of single metal nanoapertures to perform DNA hybridization sensing

Following in SPIE Photonics West conference in last January, we have a proceedings paper published.

High-efficiency single molecule fluorescence detection and correlation spectroscopy with dielectric microspheres
H. Aouani, N. Djaker, J. Wenger, and H. Rigneault, Proc. of SPIE, Proc. SPIE Vol. 7571, pp.75710A (2010)

A personal reprint can be found here.

We report of the following new results :

- microspheres made of high refractive index melamine resin provide a seven-fold fluorescence enhancement on single molecules.

- this effect can be used to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and reduce the experiment integration time by fifty-fold.

- first description of dual-color fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy (FCCS) enhanced by a microsphere.