(Invited) Mie Resonant Silicon Nanosphere Nanoantenna for Fluorescence Enhancement
Authors: Fujii Minoru , Sugimoto Hiroshi 
Published: August 2024

A nanoantenna is a device that manipulates light propagation and enhances light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. Integration of an emitter into a nanoantenna capable of increasing local density of photonic states at the emission wavelength results in the enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate (Purcell effect) and modifies the emission spectrum. A nanoantenna can also control the directionality and radiation pattern of an emitter. Traditionally, plasmonic nanoantennas made from gold or silver nanostructures supporting localized surface plasmon resonances had been the main stream of the nanoantenna research. Recently, high refractive index nanoparticles having low-order Mie resonances have been attracting attention as a new type of dielectric nanoantennas. Advantages of a dielectric nanoantenna compared to a plasmonic one are the smaller loss and the possession of magnetic type Mie resonances arising from light-induced displacement current. By properly controlling the overlap of the magnetic and electric multipole resonances, radiation patters of an emitter placed nearby can be tailored with high degree of freedom. Furthermore, magnetic-type Mie resonances can couple with higher-order optical transitions of an emitter such as a magnetic-dipole transition, and thus can enhance and control radiation from otherwise weak forbidden transitions.

Recently, we have succeeded in producing perfectly spherical nanoparticles of crystalline silicon (Si) in 100-300 nm in diameters. These Si nanospheres exhibit the electric and magnetic multipole resonances at the optical frequency [1]. In this presentation, we first show scattering and absorption properties of the Mie resonant Si nanospheres. Especially, we show that solutions of size-purified Si nanospheres exhibit vivid structural color and the solutions can be used as structural color inks. We then show that the solutions can preserve helicity of incoming circularly-polarized light and can enhance local chiral fields around nanospheres [2, 3]. This property can be used to improve the sensitivity of enantiomer-selective chiral molecular sensing. We then show some examples of enhanced light-matter interaction by Si nanoparticles. These include enhancement of magnetic dipole transitions of an emitter by magnetic-type Mie resonances of Si nanospheres (magnetic Purcell effect) [4, 5], enhancement of excitation and emission processes of in-plane dipoles of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) [6], and enhancement of a spin forbidden singlet-to-triplet absorption transition of a molecule by Si nanodisks [7, 8].

References

[1] H. Sugimoto, et. al., "Mie Resonator Color Inks of Monodispersed and Perfectly Spherical Crystalline Silicon Nanoparticles", Advanced Optical Materials, 8 (2020) 2000033.

[2] T. Hinamoto, et. al., “Colloidal Solutions of Silicon Nanospheres toward All-Dielectric Optical Metafluids”, Nano Letters, 20 (2020) 7737.

[3] H. Negoro, et. al., “Helicity-Preserving Optical Metafluids”, Nano Letters, 23 (2023) 5101.

[4] H. Sugimoto, and Minoru Fujii, "Magnetic Purcell Enhancement by Magnetic Quadrupole Resonance of Dielectric Nanosphere Antenna", ACS Photonics, 8 (2021) 1794.

[5] H. Kasai, et. al., “Selective Enhancement of Crystal-Field-Split Narrow f-f Emission Lines of Europium Ions by Electric and Magnetic Purcell Effect of Mie Resonant Silicon Nanosphere”, Advanced Optical Materials (2023) (DOI: 10.1002/adom.202301204).

[6] H. Shinomiya, et. al., “Enhanced Light Emission from Monolayer MoS2 by Doubly Resonant Spherical Si Nanoantennas”, ACS Photonics, 9 (2022) 1741.

[7] H. Sugimoto, et. al., "Direct Excitation of Triplet State of Molecule by Enhanced Magnetic Field of Dielectric Metasurfaces", Small 17 (2021) 2104458.

[8] H. Hasebe, et. al., “Photosensitizing Metasurface Empowered by Enhanced Magnetic Field of Toroidal Dipole Resonance”, Small, (2023) (DOI: 10.1002/smll.202302519).