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Abstract
Both plasmonic and photonic materials manipulate light by structurally-defined optical properties. While photonic architectures can promote the scattering and reflection of certain wavelengths of light, plasmonic materials have plasmon resonances that confine light at the nanoscale. Coupling photonic materials to plasmon resonances could enhance the plasmonic response via wavelength-dependent interference and confinement properties. Here we explore the use of wavelength-dependent, naturally-abundant photonic crystal structures found in butterfly wings as substrates for plasmonic nanoparticle deposition, and probe the plasmonic-photonic interactions using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. To better understand the wavelength dependence of field enhancement and localization of these systems, we examined the SERS responses of plasmonic nanoparticles deposited on four different butterfly wing colors with three excitation wavelengths. We find that excitation at wavelengths most closely matching the butterfly wing color produces the most intense SERS signal, with signal magnitude increases up to an order of magnitude, beyond a mere additive effect. These naturally abundant photonic structures show potential to create cheaper, wavelength-selective SERS substrates, and they provide a quantitative insight on plasmon-photonic crystal coupling.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 13887-13895 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Materials Chemistry C |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 44 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Dayeeta Saha, Christopher Warkentin, and Emily Keller for SEM characterization. We also thank Matthew Yang who performed measurements which preceded this work. This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under AFOSR award no. FA9550-15-1-0022 and the University of Minnesota Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Parts of this work were carried out in the Characterization Facility at the University of Minnesota, which receives partial support from the NSF through the MRSEC program (DMR-1420013). The authors acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota for providing resources that contributed to the research results reported within this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
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