FRET characterization of hollow plasmonic nanoantennas

We fabricated hollow nanoantennas with varying inner channels sizes on a gold-covered silicon nitride membrane. Our fabrication technique allowed us to narrow the size of the inner channels down to 15nm. We managed to exclusively decorate the tips of the antennas with thiol-conjugated dyes by creating a concentration gradient through the nanoantennas. Finally, we characterized the antennas in terms of their effect on the lifetime of dyes. We used Atto 520 and Atto 590 for the experiments. We carried out experiments with the antennas decorated with Atto 520, with Atto 590 as well as with the two Atto dyes at the same time. The experiments carried out with the antennas decorated with Atto 520 only and Atto 590 only yielded a lifetime reduction with respect to the confocal case. Interestingly, their lifetime reductions were significantly different. Then, we decorated the antennas with the two dyes at the same time. Even though we could not control the distance between the two dyes, FRET effects were clearly observed. The FRET effects were found to be dependent on the size of the inner channel. We believe that our tip decorated hollow nanoantennas could find application in FRET-based single molecule nanopore technologies.