Hybrid Layers of Laterally Oriented Plasmon Silver Nanoplates and Luminescent Quantum Dots with Resonance Energy Transfer

A technique was developed to fabricate a new type of hybrid exciton-plasmonic nanostructures consisting of laterally oriented silver nanoplates electrostatically deposited on polymer films and capped with hydrophobic Zn_xCu_yIn_zS₂/ZnS quantum dot layers via a Langmuir–Blodgett technique. Pronounced photoluminescence quenching and a decrease in the average emission decay times indicated the presence of effective resonance energy transfer in the resulting hybrid plasmonic nanostructures. An approach based on a comparison of the polarization dependences of the photoluminescence bands from monolayers of quantum dots atop the quartz glass and monolayers of laterally oriented silver nanoplates was proposed to clarify the nature of the emission from these nanostructures. The data point toward a secondary emission mechanism due to scattering by transverse surface plasmons of the silver nanoplates excited through resonance energy transfer from the quantum dots.