Eur. Phys. J. D (2014) 68: 53
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2014-40530-0

Regular Article

Fluorescence imaging assisted by surface modes on dielectric multilayers

¹ Dipartimento di Scienza Applicata e Tecnologia, Politecnico di Torino, C.so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
² Nanofacility Piemonte, Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Strada delle Cacce 91, 10135 Torino, Italy
³ Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, Albert-Einstein-Str. 7, 07745 Jena, Germany
⁴ Dipartimento di Scienze di Base e Applicate per l’Ingegneria, SAPIENZA Università di Roma, Via A. Scarpa 16, 00161 Roma, Italy

^a e-mail: emiliano.descrovi@polito.it

Received: 27 August 2013
Received in final form: 28 December 2013
Published online: 18 March 2014

Abstract

We propose a novel approach for wide-field fluorescence imaging based on dielectric multilayers on glass coverslides. It is demonstrated that the fluorescence radiated by emitters in proximity to the multilayer surface can couple to Bloch Surface Waves and subsequently leaks into the glass. The coupled fluorescence is beamed with low divergence according to the Bloch Surface Waves spectral/angular dispersion and then collected with a low-magnification imaging system. Since the coupling between emitter and surface modes is dependent on the surface local morphology, we find a strong spectral deformation of the collected fluorescence spectrum depending on the corresponding surface relieves imaged.