Journal of Luminescence 24/25 (1981)83—86 83 North-Holland Publishing Company FLUORESCENT LIFETIMES AND YIELDS OF MOLECULES ADSORBED ON SILVER—ISLAND FILMS

When molecules are adsorbed on silver island films, their fluorescent lifetimes are found to be shortened by about three orders of magnitude and their decay is found to be non— exponential in time. This behavior is a result of the electromagnetic interaction between the molecules and the silver isla...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: A. Weitz, S. Garoff, C. Hanson, T. J. Gramila, I. Gersten
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.161.9900
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/weitzlab/weitz.jlum.1981.pdf
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Summary:When molecules are adsorbed on silver island films, their fluorescent lifetimes are found to be shortened by about three orders of magnitude and their decay is found to be non— exponential in time. This behavior is a result of the electromagnetic interaction between the molecules and the silver islands. The emission process of the molecule—island system can be quite efficient, and the increased radiative rate can lead to an improved effective quantum yield for adsorbates on silver-island films. Recently, much interest has been focused on the optical properties of molecules near rough metal surfaces. This interest h~s been stimulated by the observation of surface-enhanced Raman scatter~n~(SERS),2 as well as other unusual optical properties of adsorbed molecules. ‘ It is generally believed that on rough surfaces localized electronic resonances, or Mie resonances, pl~y a large role in causing the anomalous optical properties of adsorbed molecules. In this paper