Large plasmonic fluorescence enhancement of cyanobacterial photosystem I coupled to silver island films

Abstract

A large, two-orders-of-magnitude enhancement of fluorescence emission from cyanobacterial Photosystem I (PSI) coupled to plasmonic excitations in silver island films was observed. Such a high value has not been reported for metal-enhanced fluorescence of photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes before. The dramatic enhancement of the PSI emission occurs when PSI is excited resonantly into the Qx and Qy bands of chlorophyll a. In contrast, excitation in the carotenoid absorption band yields ten times lower enhancement factors. We attribute these large values of enhancement factor to plasmon-induced activation of excitation and emission channels absent for isolated PSI complexes.