Recently we published an article in Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters titled “Strong Plasmon Enhancement of the Saturation Photon Count Rate of Single Molecules” (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c00155; publication date: February 19, 2020). Unfortunately, it recently came to our attention that there is a typographical error in the discussion of Figure 6.
Following the comments by one of the referees we modified the manuscript regarding the triplet state modifications, but we mistakenly state that the ratio γisc/γT might be at the origin of the mismatch we find in Isat. Obviously, if PCRmax matches the expectation, the ratio γisc/γT also matches the expectation. The text should therefore read that not the ratio γisc/γT but the absolute value of γisc is at the origin of the mismatch. If possible we would also like broaden the argument and include one sentence that an overestimation of the particle–fluorophore spacing might contribute as well because γnr scales more strongly with distance than γr.
The paragraph containing the above-mentioned additions and corrections should read as follows:
In the simulations we have treated the term appearing in both eq 3 and 4 as unity, following Ebbesen et al.1 Considering the fact that the PCRmax enhancement closely follows the prediction this could indicate stronger than expected plasmonic modification of γtot, which contains contributions of γnr and γisc. First, a particle–fluorophore spacing smaller than expected by only 0.5 nm causes a 2-fold increase in Isat, whereas PCRmax increases by only 10%. This is caused by the fact that γnr depends more strongly on particle–fluorophore spacing than γr. Second, modification of γisc might also play a role in the higher Isat. Modification of γisc has also been reported, but experimental studies are limited to a select number of cases2−6 that indeed report modest modifications. A quantitative investigation of triplet modifications requires a temporal resolution that is not accessible in our current camera-based setup but could be further investigated using, for example, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS).6−8
References
- Wenger J.; Gérard D.; Dintinger J.; Mahboub O.; Bonod N.; Popov E.; Ebbesen T. W.; Rigneault H. Emission and excitation contributions to enhanced single molecule fluorescence by gold nanometric apertures. Opt. Express 2008, 16, 3008. 10.1364/OE.16.003008. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Zhang Y.; Aslan K.; Previte M. J. R.; Malyn S. N.; Geddes C. D. Metal-Enhanced Phosphorescence: Interpretation in Terms of Triplet-Coupled Radiating Plasmons. J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110, 25108–25114. 10.1021/jp065261v. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Stefani F. D.; Vasilev K.; Bocchio N.; Gaul F.; Pomozzi A.; Kreiter M. Photonic mode density effects on single-molecule fluorescence blinking. New J. Phys. 2007, 9, 21–21. 10.1088/1367-2630/9/2/021. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
- Chaudhuri D.; Li D.; Sigmund E.; Wettach H.; Höger S.; Lupton J. M. Plasmonic surface enhancement of dual fluorescence and phosphorescence emission from organic semiconductors: effect of exchange gap and spin-orbit coupling. Chem. Commun. 2012, 48, 6675. 10.1039/c2cc31843a. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Gill R.; Tian L.; van Amerongen H.; Subramaniam V. Emission enhancement and lifetime modification of phosphorescence on silver nanoparticle aggregates. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2013, 15, 15734. 10.1039/c3cp50407g. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Wenger J.; Cluzel B.; Dintinger J.; Bonod N.; Fehrembach A.-L.; Popov E.; Lenne P.-F.; Ebbesen T. W.; Rigneault H. Radiative and Nonradiative Photokinetics Alteration Inside a Single Metallic Nanometric Aperture. J. Phys. Chem. C 2007, 111, 11469–11474. 10.1021/jp0726135. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
- Eggeling C.; Widengren J.; Rigler R.; Seidel C. A. M. Photobleaching of Fluorescent Dyes under Conditions Used for Single-Molecule Detection: Evidence of Two-Step Photolysis. Anal. Chem. 1998, 70, 2651–2659. 10.1021/ac980027p. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Eggeling C.; Volkmer A.; Seidel C. A. M. Molecular Photobleaching Kinetics of Rhodamine 6G by One- and Two-Photon Induced Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy. ChemPhysChem 2005, 6, 791–804. 10.1002/cphc.200400509. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]