Bionic Plasmonic Nanoarrays Excited by Radially Polarized Vector Beam for Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence

Metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) is an important fluorescence technology due to its ability to significantly improve the fluorescence intensity. Here, we present a new MEF configuration of the bionic nanorod array illuminated by radially polarized vector beam (RVB). The bionic nanorod array is fabricated via a nanoimprinting method by using the wings of the Chinese cicada meimuna mongolica as bio-templates, and later coating gold film by ion sputtering deposition method. The MEF performance of the prepared substrate is tested by a home-made optical system. The experiment results show that, in the case of RVB excitation, the intensity of fluorescence is more than 10 times stronger with the nano-imprinted substrate than that with glass. Using the bionic nanoarray as a substrate, the intensity of fluorescence is similar to 2 times stronger via RVB than that by the linearly polarized beam. In addition, the prepared substrate is verified to have good uniformity.

Automated summary

This study presents a new configuration of metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) using a bionic nanorod array illuminated by a radially polarized vector beam (RVB), which significantly improves the fluorescence intensity. Results show that, with RVB excitation, the fluorescence intensity of the nanoimprinted substrate is more than 10 times stronger than that of glass, and the bionic nanoarray substrate has a fluorescence intensity approximately 2 times stronger with RVB compared to linearly polarized beam.