We report a solution for the challenge of having luminescence and metal conductivity from the same material. The fabrication of a hybrid metal-conductive luminescent film that manifests this dual property is described: the conductivity arising from a continuous gold thin film structure and luminescence originating from the embedded fluorescent emitters (nanoparticles of silica-coated CdSe/CdS quantum dots (QD/SiO2 NPs)). The embedding of the QD/SiO2 NPs is performed via a self-templating gold electroless process. The presence of the insulating silica layer on the QDs avoids quenching and enables luminescence, while still allowing plasmonic coupling of the QDs, as observed by luminescence lifetime analysis and by surface-enhanced Raman scattering. The potential applications of this special dual functionality are demonstrated by its used as a temperature probe: Passing current (heating the gold thin film) affects the emission intensity and induces a spectral red-shift of the QD/SiO2 NPs. All properties of this metal-conductive luminescent film required the special embedding architecture and are not observed with simple adsorption of QD/SiO2 NPs on a continuous Au film.
Keywords: current/temperature sensitive; embedding; fluorescence; metallic conductive; quantum dots.