Filtern
Dokumenttyp
Sprache
- Englisch (2)
Referierte Publikation
- ja (2)
Schlagworte
- Brownian motion (1)
- Nanoparticle (1)
- Nanoparticles (1)
- Optical tweezers (1)
- Plasmon enhancement (1)
- SAXS (1)
- Small-angle X-ray scattering (1)
- Upconversion (1)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
- 5 Werkstofftechnik (1)
- 5.6 Glas (1)
Upconverting nanoparticles are essential in modern photonics due to their ability to convert infrared light to visible light. Despite their significance, they exhibit limited brightness, a key drawback that can be addressed by combining them with plasmonic nanoparticles. Plasmon-enhanced upconversion has been widely demonstrated in dry environments, where upconverting nanoparticles are immobilized, but constitutes a challenge in liquid media where Brownian motion competes against immobilization.
This study employs optical tweezers for the three-dimensional manipulation of an individual upconverting nanoparticle, enabling the exploration of plasmon-enhanced upconversion luminescence in water. Contrary to expectation, experiments reveal a long-range (micrometer scale) and moderate (20%) enhancement in upconversion luminescence due to the plasmonic resonances of gold nanostructures. Comparison between experiments and numerical simulations evidences the key role of Brownian motion. It is demonstrated how the three-dimensional Brownian fluctuations of the upconverting nanoparticle lead to an “average effect” that explains the magnitude and spatial extension of luminescence enhancement.
In the present study, we applied a regularized inversion method to extract the particle size, magnetic moment and relaxation-time distribution of magnetic nanoparticles from small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS), DC magnetization (DCM) and AC susceptibility (ACS) measurements. For the measurements the particles were colloidally dispersed in water. At first approximation the particles could be assumed to be spherically shaped and homogeneously magnetized single-domain particles. As model functions for the inversion, we used the particle form factor of a sphere (SAXS), the Langevin function (DCM) and the Debye model (ACS). The extracted distributions exhibited features/peaks that could be distinctly attributed to the individually dispersed and non-interacting nanoparticles. Further analysis of these peaks enabled, in combination with a prior characterization of the particle ensemble by electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering, a detailed structural and magnetic characterization of the particles. Additionally, all three extracted distributions featured peaks, which indicated deviations of the scattering (SAXS), magnetization (DCM) or relaxation (ACS) behavior from the one expected for individually dispersed, homogeneously magnetized nanoparticles. These deviations could be mainly attributed to partial agglomeration (SAXS, DCM, ACS), uncorrelated surface spins (DCM) and/or intra-well relaxation processes (ACS). The main advantage of the numerical inversion method is that no ad hoc assumptions regarding the line shape of the extracted distribution functions are required, which enabled the detection of these contributions. We highlighted this by comparing the results with the results obtained by standard model fits, where the functional form of the distributions was a priori assumed to be log-normal shaped.
