Purcell radiative rate enhancement of label-free proteins with ultraviolet aluminum plasmonics
Ultraviolet plasmonics has attracted recently a growing attention owing to the possibility to take advantage of increased light-matter interaction in the UV range. However, the core question of demonstrating the capacity of UV plasmonic structures to enhance the radiative emission rate of proteins has remained unproven yet.
In a recent article published in J . Phys D Appl. Phys, we report the first complete demonstration of the Purcell radiative rate enhancement for label-free proteins in plasmonic aluminum nanoapertures. Regardless of the complexity of protein structure and its low intrinsic emission quantum yield, we can clearly show that the aluminum plasmonic nanoapertures can significantly enhance the spontaneous UV emission rate of proteins. Our results show that concepts developed for single quantum sources in the visible can still be applied on complex proteins containing thousands of aminoacids.
Open access paper also freely available on arXiv 2107.06357
/image%2F1383851%2F20210826%2Fob_57e599_figure-1-copieweb.jpg)