Photoluminescence enhancement in nanoimprinted photonic crystals and coupled surface plasmons

A method to enhance the photoluminescence of dye chromophores- loaded by coupling the emission to surface plasmons in nanoimprinted photonic crystals is reported. A 9- fold enhancement in the spontaneous emission intensity of a rhodamine- doped polymer film is achieved on a silver layer due to surface plasmon excitation. By changing the surface plasmon frequency, this enhancement can be suppressed. When the polymer film is patterned by nanoimprint lithography with a twodimensional photonic crystal the photoluminescence intensity increases up to 27 times compared to unpatterned samples on a quartz substrate. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.