Plasmon-enhanced coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering vs plasmon-enhanced stimulated Raman scattering: Comparison of line shape and enhancement factor.
Cheng Zong: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Yurun Xie: State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China.
Meng Zhang: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Yimin Huang: Department of Chemistry, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Chen Yang: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. ORCID
Ji-Xin Cheng: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. ORCID
Plasmon-enhanced coherent Raman scattering microscopy has reached single-molecule detection sensitivity. Due to the different driven fields, there are significant differences between a coherent Raman scattering process and its plasmon-enhanced derivative. The commonly accepted line shapes for coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering and stimulated Raman scattering do not hold for the plasmon-enhanced condition. Here, we present a theoretical model that describes the spectral line shapes in plasmon-enhanced coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (PECARS). Experimentally, we measured PECARS and plasmon-enhanced stimulated Raman scattering (PESRS) spectra of 4-mercaptopyridine adsorbed on the self-assembled Au nanoparticle (NP) substrate and aggregated Au NP colloids. The PECARS spectra show a nondispersive line shape, while the PESRS spectra exhibit a dispersive line shape. PECARS shows a higher signal to noise ratio and a larger enhancement factor than PESRS from the same specimen. It is verified that the nonresonant background in PECARS originates from the photoluminescence of nanostructures. The decoupling of background and the vibrational resonance component results in the nondispersive line shape in PECARS. More local electric field enhancements are involved in the PECARS process than in PESRS, which results in a higher enhancement factor in PECARS. The current work provides new insight into the mechanism of plasmon-enhanced coherent Raman scattering and helps to optimize the experimental design for ultrasensitive chemical imaging.
References
Nano Lett. 2018 Sep 12;18(9):5791-5796
[PMID: 30064221]
