One of the strategies employed to increase the sensitivity of the fluorescence-based biosensors is to deposit chromophores on plasmonic metasurfaces which are periodic arrays of resonating nano-antennas that allow the control of the electromagnetic field leading to fluorescence enhancement. While artificially engineered metasurfaces realized by micro/nano-fabrication techniques lead to a precise tailoring of the excitation field and resonant cavity properties, the technological overhead, small areas, and high manufacturing cost renders them unsuitable for mass production. A method to circumvent these challenges is to use random distribution of metallic nanoparticles sustaining plasmonic resonances, which present the properties required to significantly enhance the fluorescence. We investigate metasurfaces composed of random aggregates of metal nanoparticles deposited on a silicon and glass substrates. The finite difference time domain simulations of the interaction of the incident electromagnetic wave with the structures reveals a significant enhancement of the excitation field, which is due to the resonant plasmonic modes sustained by the nanoparticles aggregates. We experimentally investigated the role of these structures in the fluorescent behaviour of Rhodamine 6G dispersed in polymethylmethacrylate finding an enhancement that is 423-fold. This suggests that nanoparticle aggregates have the potential to constitute a suitable platform for low-cost, mass-produced fluorescent biosensors.
Keywords: fluorescence; fluorescence enhancement; localized field enhancement; nanophononics; plasmonic metasurface.