Highly confined, enhanced surface fluorescence imaging with two-dimensional silver nanoparticle sheets

A method of obtaining highly confined, enhanced surface fluorescence imaging is proposed using two-dimensional (2D) silver nanoparticle (AgMy) sheets. This technique is based on the localized surface plasmon resonance excited homogeneously on a 2D silver nanoparticle sheet. The AgMy sheets are fabricated at the air-water interface by self-assembly and transferred onto hydrophobic glass substrates. These sheets can enhance the fluorescence only when the excitation wavelength overlaps with the plasmon resonance wavelength. To confirm the validity of this technique, two separate test experiments are performed. One is the epifluorescence microscope imaging of a quantum dot 2D sheet on the AgMy 2D sheet with a SiO₂ spacer layer, where the fluorescence is maximized with the 20 nm SiO₂ layer, determined by the Förster resonance energy transfer distances. The second experiment is the imaging of a single fluorescence bead with a total internal reflection fluorescent microscope. We confirmed that the AgMy sheet provides a 4-fold increase in fluorescence with a 160-nm spatial resolution at 30 ms/frame snapshot. The AgMy sheet will be a powerful tool for high sensitivity and high-resolution real time bioimaging at nanointerfaces.