Complex nanoparticle of light-emitting MEH-PPV with Au: enhanced luminescence

Complex nanoparticles (NPs) of poly(2-methoxy-5-(2'-ethylhexyloxy)-p-phenylene vinylene) (MEH-PPV) NP adsorbed with Au NPs (MEH-PPV/Au NPs) were fabricated through a reprecipitation method. The formation of MEH-PPV/Au NP complexes was confirmed through high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared experiments. The laser confocal microscope photoluminescence (PL) efficiency of the complex MEH-PPV/Au single NP dramatically increased compared with that of the MEH-PPV single NP without Au NPs, which was directly confirmed through color charge-coupled device images. The enhanced PL efficiency of the MEH-PPV/Au NP complex might have originated from the energy transfer effect in a surface plasmon resonance coupling between a MEH-PPV NP and Au NPs. The strong local field enhancement due to nanogaps between Au NPs in the background of a light-emitting MEH-PPV NP might be another origin of the PL enhancement of the NP complex, as supported by finite difference time domain calculations. We also observed the blue shift of the PL peaks of the single MEH-PPV and MEH-PPV/Au NP, compared with the solution PL peaks of those NPs.