Photoluminescence of the polymer/dye composites with different geometry in the near fields of Ag nanostructures

In this work we obtained a highly fluorescent planar material based on a mixture of organic molecules and Ag nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles were vacuum-deposited on the sapphire surface. The morphology of these samples was characterized by SEM. Then, they were covered by rhodamine 6G and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) layers with different geometry. As a result, we observed the enhancement of rhodamine absorption in the near fields of Ag nanoparticles. On the other hand, the enhancement of the photoluminescence of rhodamine was only for the samples with an isolating PMMA layer and PMMA as a matrix for rhodamine molecules. In the latter case, the photoluminescence of the rhodamine 6G with silver nanoparticles was 22-fold more intense than on a substrate without nanoparticles.