Diverging Surface Plasmon Polaritons for Single Upconverting Nanoparticle Imaging

Duc Le; Marjut Kreivi; Sanna Aikio; Noora Heinilehto; Teemu Sipola; Jarno Petäjä; Tian Long Guo; Matthieu Roussey; Jussi Hiltunen

doi:10.1002/lpor.202500426

Diverging Surface Plasmon Polaritons for Single Upconverting Nanoparticle Imaging

Duc Le^*
, Marjut Kreivi
, Sanna Aikio
, Noora Heinilehto
, Teemu Sipola
, Jarno Petäjä
, Tian Long Guo
, Matthieu Roussey
, Jussi Hiltunen

^*Corresponding author for this work

University of Eastern Finland

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

132 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) offer great potential for single-molecule labeled biosensing because of their background-free detection and high photostability. However, the weak intensity emitted by one individual UCNP, inherent to its low intrinsic upconversion efficiency, represents a challenge to tackle when imaging single UCNPs. The motivation for this work is to study how diverging surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be used in the imaging of individual UCNPs. The analytical solution to describe the SPP coupling and the diverging mode propagation is derived. Numerical simulations are conducted, and their results are in excellent agreement with the analytical solution. The phenomenon is also studied experimentally by using diverging SPPs to excite UCNPs immobilized on a gold surface and imaging their emissions. The results show that the detection of single UCNPs over a large area is possible. This work offers a novel approach toward single-molecule digital detection in biosensor applications.

Original language	English
Article number	e00426
Journal	Laser and Photonics Reviews
Volume	19
Issue number	19
Early online date	2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.202500426
Publication status	Published - 7 Oct 2025
MoE publication type	A1 Journal article-refereed

Funding

This work was under three projects funded by the Research Council of Finland: Printed Intelligence Infrastructure with decision 358621, Digital Single Molecule Detection with Plasmonic-Enhanced Up-Conversion (DISIMO) with decisions 363445 and 363570, and Photonics Research and Innovation (PREIN) with decisions 368651 and 368653.

Keywords

biosensing application
digital detection
diverging surface plasmon polariton
single-molecule imaging
upconverting nanoparticles

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10.1002/lpor.202500426Licence: CC BY

lpor.202500426Final published version, 8.43 MBLicence: CC BY

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title = "Diverging Surface Plasmon Polaritons for Single Upconverting Nanoparticle Imaging",

abstract = "Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) offer great potential for single-molecule labeled biosensing because of their background-free detection and high photostability. However, the weak intensity emitted by one individual UCNP, inherent to its low intrinsic upconversion efficiency, represents a challenge to tackle when imaging single UCNPs. The motivation for this work is to study how diverging surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be used in the imaging of individual UCNPs. The analytical solution to describe the SPP coupling and the diverging mode propagation is derived. Numerical simulations are conducted, and their results are in excellent agreement with the analytical solution. The phenomenon is also studied experimentally by using diverging SPPs to excite UCNPs immobilized on a gold surface and imaging their emissions. The results show that the detection of single UCNPs over a large area is possible. This work offers a novel approach toward single-molecule digital detection in biosensor applications.",

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AU - Le, Duc

AU - Kreivi, Marjut

AU - Aikio, Sanna

AU - Heinilehto, Noora

AU - Sipola, Teemu

AU - Petäjä, Jarno

AU - Guo, Tian Long

AU - Roussey, Matthieu

AU - Hiltunen, Jussi

PY - 2025/10/7

Y1 - 2025/10/7

N2 - Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) offer great potential for single-molecule labeled biosensing because of their background-free detection and high photostability. However, the weak intensity emitted by one individual UCNP, inherent to its low intrinsic upconversion efficiency, represents a challenge to tackle when imaging single UCNPs. The motivation for this work is to study how diverging surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be used in the imaging of individual UCNPs. The analytical solution to describe the SPP coupling and the diverging mode propagation is derived. Numerical simulations are conducted, and their results are in excellent agreement with the analytical solution. The phenomenon is also studied experimentally by using diverging SPPs to excite UCNPs immobilized on a gold surface and imaging their emissions. The results show that the detection of single UCNPs over a large area is possible. This work offers a novel approach toward single-molecule digital detection in biosensor applications.

AB - Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) offer great potential for single-molecule labeled biosensing because of their background-free detection and high photostability. However, the weak intensity emitted by one individual UCNP, inherent to its low intrinsic upconversion efficiency, represents a challenge to tackle when imaging single UCNPs. The motivation for this work is to study how diverging surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be used in the imaging of individual UCNPs. The analytical solution to describe the SPP coupling and the diverging mode propagation is derived. Numerical simulations are conducted, and their results are in excellent agreement with the analytical solution. The phenomenon is also studied experimentally by using diverging SPPs to excite UCNPs immobilized on a gold surface and imaging their emissions. The results show that the detection of single UCNPs over a large area is possible. This work offers a novel approach toward single-molecule digital detection in biosensor applications.

KW - biosensing application

KW - digital detection

KW - diverging surface plasmon polariton

KW - single-molecule imaging

KW - upconverting nanoparticles

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DO - 10.1002/lpor.202500426

M3 - Article

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ER -

Diverging Surface Plasmon Polaritons for Single Upconverting Nanoparticle Imaging

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