Enhanced light harvesting through efficient energy transfer in a pluronic co-polymer scaffolded blend of donor dyes and plasmonic Au-MoS2 hybrid nanostructures
摘要
Integrating plasmonic two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides with organic dyes offers strong light-matter interactions, broad-band light absorption, and tailorable optoelectronic properties. Significant fluorescence quenching of dyes through efficient excitation energy transfer in such hybrid heterostructures is of paramount importance for applications in light harvesting, photocatalysis, sensing and optoelectronics. In this work, we investigate fluorescence quenching of two different dyes, a hydrophilic rhodamine 6G (R6G) and a hydrophobic coumarin 153 (C153) in polymer-nanostructure assemblies with plasmonic (Au), excitonic (MoS2) and plasmonic-excitonic (Au-MoS2) hybrid nanostructures. The polymer-nanostructure assemblies are formed in situ using a pluronic triblock copolymer F127 as a scaffold which serves as a multifunctional platform for nanostructure synthesis, stabilization, and dye-encapsulation. Detailed spectroscopic studies reveal that the nanoscale variations of dye-nanostructure distances based on distinct preferential localization of the two dyes within the polymer scaffold surrounding the nanostructures modulate their static and dynamic quenching efficiencies. By leveraging the combined plasmonic and excitonic interactions in an Au-MoS2 hybrid nanostructure-polymer assembly, significantly enhanced fluorescence quenching efficiencies are observed for both dyes in comparison to the individual Au and MoS2 nanostructures. The enhanced time-resolved quenching suggests efficient excitation energy transfer which is promising for opto-electronic and photocatalytic applications.
Graphical Abstract