New publication in Nano Letters

17 March 2016

Organic plasmonic waveguides

Energy transport in organic materials is dependent on the coherent migration of optically-induced excited states. For instance, in active organic waveguides, the tight packing of neutral dye molecules allows delocalization of excitons over a distance generally limited to at most several hundred nanometers. Here we demonstrate an alternative mechanism of energy transport in a triarylamine-based supramolecular organic waveguide which is plasmonic in nature and results in coherent energy propagation on the order of 10 micrometers. The optical, electric, and magnetic properties of the doped material support the presence of metallic electrons which couple with and transport incident light. These results show that organic metals constitute a novel class of materials with efficient energy transport and are of potential interest for optoelectronics, plasmonics, and artificial light-energy harvesting systems.

Long-Range Energy Transport via Plasmonic Propagation in a Supramolecular Organic Waveguide
Armao, J. J. ; Rabu, P. ; Moulin, E. ; Giuseppone, N.
Nano Lett. 2016, 16, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b00581