Influence of silver grain size, roughness, and profile on the extraordinary fluorescence enhancement capabilities of grating coupled surface plasmon resonance

Since the development of fluoroimmunoassays, researchers have sought a method of substantially enhancing fluorescence intensity to extend the limits of detection to new levels of sensitivity. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and metal enhanced fluorescence has long been a topic of research and has led to the development of prism- and grating-based SPR systems. However, with the wide coupling range and ease of exciting SPR on plasmonic gratings with a simple microscope objective, they have tremendous potential for revolutionizing the fields of plasmonics, fluorescence, and sensors. In an effort to better understand the influence of grating profile and metal film properties on the extraordinary fluorescence enhancement capabilities of plasmonic gratings, a novel microcontact printing process and different metal deposition techniques were used to fabricate silver gratings with varying grain diameters, roughnesses, heights, and duty cycles using thermal evaporation and RF sputtering. The resulting plasmonic gratings exhibited fluorescence enhancements up to 116x that of dye-coated glass slides using an epifluorescence microscope, much higher than more expensive prism-based SPR systems. This silver grating represents an extraordinary opportunity to quickly and easily enhance fluorescence and widen the detection limits of common fluorescence based assays with little to no equipment modification.