Hybrid-organic photonic structures for light emission modification

We report the modification of the photoluminescence (PL) and decay rates of two different green-emitting conjugated polymers incorporated into photonic crystals with the stop-bands spectrally tuned on their emission. We observe both suppression (in the stop-band) and enhancement (at the high-energy band-edge) of the photoluminescence. Time-resolved measurements also reveal a concomitant modification of the emission lifetime that is enhanced at the band-edge and suppressed within the stop-band, thus confirming a variation of the radiative decay rate of the excitations in such photonic nanostructures. We propose two examples of fluorescent photonic composite systems. The first consists of a hybrid Si-organic system, obtained by infiltration of the polymer inside a rugate filter (a 1D photonic crystal). The second example is a fully organic system obtained by self-assembling of solvent-compatible microspheres-polymer system for obtaining a synthetic opal (a 3D photonic crystal) with a uniform distribution of the emitting material across the photonic structure.