Controllable metal-enhanced fluorescence in organized films and colloidal system

•We review the construction of systems based on metal-enhanced fluorescence.•Various kinds of materials serve as spacer to separate metal and fluorophores.•The fluorophores show enhanced intensity, photostability and other desirable effects.•The MEF can be exploited to improve the potential of present fluorescence-based techniques.

In recent years, considerable efforts have been devoted to better understand the unique emission properties of fluorophores enhanced by the localized surface plasmon resonance of metal nanoparticles (NPs), due to the widespread applications of fluorescence techniques. It is demonstrated by experiment and theoretical calculation that the enhancement efficiency strongly depends on the morphology of the metal NPs, the spectral overlap between metal and fluorophores, the separation distance between them, and other factors. Among these aspects to be considered are suitable spacer material and assembling methods to control the spatial arrangement of plasmonic NPs and fluorophore with proper optical properties and interactions. In this contribution, we provide a brief overview on recent progress of metal-enhanced fluorescence in organized films and colloidal systems.

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