Uncovering the Mechanisms of Triplet–Triplet Annihilation Upconversion Enhancement via Plasmonic Nanocavity Tuning

The nonlinear conversion of photons from lower to higher energy is important for a wide range of applications, from quantum communications and optoelectronics to solar energy conversion and medicine. Triplet–triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA UC), which utilizes an absorber/emitter molecular pair, is a promising tool for upconversion applications requiring low intensity light such as photovoltaics, photocatalysis, and bioimaging. Despite demonstrations of efficient TTA UC in solution, practical applications have proven difficult, as thin films retard the necessary energy transfer steps and result in low emission yields. In this work, TTA UC emission from a thin film is greatly enhanced through integration into plasmonic nanogap cavities consisting of a silver mirror, a nanometer-scale polymer spacer containing a TTA molecular pair, and colloidally synthesized silver nanocubes. Mechanistic studies performed by varying the nanocube side length (45–150 nm) to tune the nanogap cavity resonance paired with simulations reveal absorption rate enhancement to be the primary operative mechanism in overall TTA UC emission enhancement. This absorption enhancement decreases the TTA UC threshold intensity by an order of magnitude and allows TTA UC emission to be excited with light up to 120 nm redder than the usable wavelength range for the control samples. Further, combined nanogap cavities composed of two distinct nanocube sizes result in surfaces which simultaneously enhance the absorption rate and emission rate. These dual-size nanogap cavities result in 45-fold TTA UC emission enhancement. In total, these studies present TTA UC emission enhancement, illustrate how the usable portion of the spectrum can be expanded for a given sensitizer–emitter pair, and develop both mechanistic understanding and design rules for TTA UC emission enhancement by plasmonic nanostructures.