Tailored nanoporous gold for ultrahigh fluorescence enhancement

We report molecular fluorescence enhancement of free-standing nanoporous gold in which the nanoporosity can be arbitrarily tailored by the combination of dealloying and electroless gold plating. The nanoporous gold fabricated by this facile method possesses unique porous structures with large gold ligaments and very small pores, and exhibits significant improvements in surface enhanced fluorescence as well as structure rigidity. It demonstrates that the confluence effect of improved quantum yield and excitation of fluorophores is responsible for the large fluorescence enhancement due to the near-field enhancement of nanoporous gold, which arises from the strong electromagnetic coupling between neighboring ligaments and the weakening of plasmon damping of the large ligaments because of the small pore size and large ligament size, respectively.