From the fitting data, the emission rate of the QDs on the uniform Au nanoarray increased from 0.0429 to 0.50 ns−1, showing an enhancement of 10.7 times. As the distance between QDs and Au nanoarray is variable (QDs cannot assemble at the top side of the Au nanoarray) and the LDOS enhancement
is sensitive to the increase of the z distance, it is reasonable that the light emission rate enhancement is smaller than the average theoretical LDOS enhancement. Also, it should be noted that the normalized A f rate (A f / (A f + A s)) for QDs on uniform and nonuniform Au nanoarrays is 87.4% and 76.1%, which means that the fast decay process is dominant and the uniform Au nanoarray is a better STI571 choice for emission-manipulating
nanoantennas. This Au nanoarray is the sample in Figure 2b, which is similar to the uniform simulation model of Figure 3, and the time-resolved PL spectra of QDs with selleck compound emission peak located at 790 nm on the Au nanoarray can be found in Additional file 1: Figure S5. Conclusions In this letter, we have proposed an easy and controllable method to prepare highly ordered Au nanoarrays by pulse alternating current deposition in anodic aluminum oxide template. This method not only averts some complicated inevitable processes in AAO DC deposition but also can easily fabricate Au nanoarrays as uniform as those by the DC deposition, which can be demonstrated using SEM image, TEM image, and UV–vis-NIR spectrophotometer. Using the FDTD and Green function methods, we further theoretically investigated the surface plasmon resonance, electric
field distribution, and LDOS enhancement in the uniform Au nanoarray system and found that the maximum LDOS enhancement can be 81.2 times at the tip of the Selleckchem Osimertinib Au nanoarray. The time-resolved PL spectra of quantum dots show that the Au nanoarray can increase the emission rate of QDs from 0.0429 to 0.5 ns−1 (10.7 times larger). Our findings reveal that the conveniently AC-grown Au nanoarray can serve as light emission-manipulating antennas and could help build various functional plasmonic nanodevices. Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by NSFC (11204385), the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB923200), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant 12lgpy45), and a fund from the Education Department of Guangdong Province (2012LYM_0011). Electronic supplementary material Additional file 1: Supporting information. The file contains Figures S1 to S5. (PDF 704 KB) References 1. Liu N, Hentshel M, Weiss T, Alivisatos A, Giessen H: Three-dimensional plasmon rulers. Science 2011, 322:1407–1410.CrossRef 2. Chen HJ, Shao L, Li Q, Wang JF: Gold nanorods and their plasmonic properties. Chem Soc Rev 2013, 42:2679–2724.CrossRef 3.