Can Nanocavities Significantly Enhance Resonance Energy Transfer in a Single Donor-Acceptor Pair?

Yu Chen Wei, Ming Wei Lee, Pi Tai Chou, Gregory D. Scholes, George C. Schatz, Liang Yan Hsu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Long-range resonance energy transfer (RET) and the control of energy transfer on the nanoscale have received considerable attention both experimentally and theoretically during the past few decades. We have investigated the RET between a donor/acceptor pair in the nanocavities based on our previous theory developed in the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics (QED). On the basis of this theory, the enhancements in the RET with respect to the rate in vacuum were evaluated for a Fabry-Pérot cavity. When the displacement vector between the two molecules is aligned with the cavity axis of the Fabry-Pérot cavity, we find that cavity modes give enhancements of less than a factor of 10 due to the interference between contributions from resonant and non-resonant cavity modes. By comparison, when the displacement vector between the two molecules is aligned in a plane perpendicular to the cavity axis, we find that the cavity modes can induce enhancements of more than a factor of 10, and the surface plasmon-polariton modes can induce enhancements of up to a factor of 300. We develop a convenient representation for understanding the effect of the displacement vector between the molecules and of the molecular dipole directions in terms of the H-dimer and J-dimer properties. To further enhance the RET, we propose a square silver cavity that gives a rate enhancement of a factor of 280 under cavity resonance conditions, which provides important insight into developing devices capable of long-range RET.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)18119-18128
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry C
Volume125
Issue number33
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 26 2021

Funding

Y.-C.W. and L.-Y.H. thank Academia Sinica and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST 109-2113-M-001-021, MOST 110-2113-M-001-053) for generous support. G.C.S. was supported by NSF grant CHE-2055565. G.D.S. acknowledges funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under award no. DE-SC0015429.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • General Energy
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
  • Surfaces, Coatings and Films

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