Far-Field Plasmonic Resonance Enhanced Nano-Particle Image Velocimetry Within A Micro Channel
Far-Field Plasmonic Resonance Enhanced Nano-Particle Image Velocimetry Within A Micro Channel
Far-Field Plasmonic Resonance Enhanced Nano-Particle Image Velocimetry Within A Micro Channel
Knoxville TN 37996
Abstract
In this paper, a novel far-field plasmonic resonance enhanced nanoparticle-seeded Particle Image
Velocimetry (nPIV) has been demonstrated to measure the velocity profile in a micro channel.
Chemically synthesized silver nanoparticles have been used to seed the flow in the micro channel.
By using Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA), plasmonic resonance enhanced light scattering
has been calculated for spherical silver nanoparticles with diameters ranging from 15nm to
200nm. Optimum scattering wavelength is specified for the nanoparticles in two media: water
and air. The diffraction-limited plasmonic resonance enhanced images of silver nanoparticles at
different diameters have been recorded and analyzed. By using standard PIV techniques, the
velocity profile within the micro channel has been determined from the images.
1. Background
In the area of fluid mechanics and aerodynamics, velocity field is one of the most important
physical parameters [1, 2]. However the velocity measurement is not trivial, especially for
boundary layers or micro channels in which inherent compressibility effects, temperature and
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density gradient make the direct measurement of velocity somewhat more difficult. The existing
flow diagnostic techniques are not well suited for such measurements. Pilot-static pressure
probes, Hot Wire Anemometry (HWA) [3], Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) [4, 5], Molecular
Tagging Velocimetry (MTV) [6-9], Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) [2, 10-12] and micron
resolution PIV (µPIV) [13-16] etc. have many limitations for the purpose of such measurement.
The pilot-static probe is ineffective because of the inherent wave structure created by the probe.
conditions. The hot-wire probe becomes sensitive to the local mass-flux and total temperature.
Hence, data acquisition and data-reduction procedures are subsequently more challenging, and
LDV, PIV and µPIV can provide direct measurement of the velocity in such flows, all methods
require seeding particles of large dimensions added to the flow. Due to the inertial effects of the
particles, they may not be able to track the flow accurately, especially across the shock wave or
the near wall region within the boundary layers. PIV has a significant degrading effect with
increasing particle size [17]. As a comparison, MTV tags air or other molecules themselves and
thus is able to follow rapid transitions: a shock wave in the flow. Of course no global information
can be obtained through MTV due to the limited tagging regions. In a universal point of view,
seeding particles in MTV are molecules which are on the order of a few Angstroms and have
perfect tracking property. While particles used in LDV and PIV are artificially injected which
are on the order of 100nm to tens of microns, they may not be able to track the flow perfectly.
technique, nano-Particle Image Velocimetry (nPIV). Nanoparticles have many unique properties:
some of them may not even be well described by traditional theories in physics and mechanics
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due to the breakdown of the scale law [18]. Among the properties, the plasmonics-enhanced light
scattering and fluorescence emission can significantly improve nanoparticles’ visibility without
increasing their size and weight [19, 20]. According to Stokes’ theorem, as particles dimension
and weight decrease, particle response time to the flow conditions becomes shorter and flow
tracking capability gets better [21]. For example, PIV measurement have been successfully
shock boundary layer interactions by TiO2 nanoparticles at diameters of ~170nm [23], which are
not possible at all for common micron-sized particles. However, the spatial resolution of those
measurements is still insufficient to determine the near wall flow properties. Smaller
nanoparticles will be able to track the boundary layer flows at a more detailed manner. As an
example, natural seeding of condensed H2O and CO2 particles at diameters of ~10 nm has been
successfully used in the hypersonic boundary layer measurement [24]. Obviously natural seeding
is limited to flows at certain conditions and cannot approach the near wall region of the
supersonic boundary layers. This is because the condensed H2O and CO2 particles are evaporated
2. Flow Seeders
First, light scattering from a particle, either Mie or Rayleigh scattering, can be calculated from
Mie scattering theory, which reveals that light scattered by a particle is proportional to the square
of its volume. The cross section σ of light scattering can be expressed as [25, 26]
2
m
24 V3 2
(1)
2 m
3
where V is the volume of the particle, ε is the dielectric constant of the particle, and εm is the
dielectric constant of the surrounding. The light scattering power P is the product of the cross
section and incident light intensity I, P I . So in the light scattering, large particles always
dominate smaller ones. When radius of the particles decreases by a factor of 100, for example
particles at diameters of 10 nm instead of 1 µm, the scattering power will decrease by 1012. The
light scattering from the nanoparticles is weak and difficult to be measured. It will be extremely
hard to collect light scattering from nanoparticles if large dust particles are present. Table 1
shows typical scattering cross sections of particles as a function of the particle size. In general,
the smaller the particle is, the more difficult for it to be detected by Mie/Rayleigh scattering.
Second, tracking capability of seeding particles can be estimated by Stokes’ theorem. The basic
assumptions of Stokes’ flow are that flow is incompressible and Reynolds number is very small.
Thus the inertia terms can be neglected in the Navier-Stokes equations, and only the viscous
force balances the pressure that drags the particle. The supersonic flow is compressible and
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temperature gradient in the boundary layer causes variations in viscosity. However, the local
flow velocity fluctuation relative to the moving particle is still subsonic. Local Mach number
fluctuation from its mean value is still below 0.3 when the free stream Mach number reaches 4
and below 1 when the Mach number reaches 7.2 for a zero-pressure-gradient adiabatic boundary
layer at moderately high Reynolds numbers [28]. So Stokes’ theorem can still be used to
approximate and analyze how the nanoparticles follow the supersonic flows. The relaxation time
p
p d p2 (1 2.7 Knd )
18 f
(2)
Where dp and ρp are the diameter and density of the particle, respectively, µf is the viscosity, Knd
is the Knudsen number. Approximately the response time of the particle is proportional to the
density of the particle and the square of the diameter of the particle. Air molecules tagged by
MTV can perfectly measure the velocity across the shock, while particles seeded in PIV show
degraded effects. Therefore the smaller and lighter the particle is, the better for it to track the
flow motion. The lower limit for the seeding particle is set by the measurement uncertainties due
Plasmonic effect is the generation of highly localized light fields in the near-field of metallic
nanostructures [29]. Light scattering, including Rayleigh and Raman scattering, can be
significantly enhanced by the plasmonic resonance. To quantify the plasmonic resonance effects,
Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) method [30] has been used to calculate the light
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In Figure 1, comparison between silver nanoparticles with TiO2 nanoparticles at the same sizes is
shown. With a diameter of 22.3 nm, silver nanoparticles show the resonance enhanced light
scattering at 360nm in air and ~400nm in water. TiO2 nanoparticles show no resonance effects.
Figure 1. Comparison of light scattering spectra between silver and TiO2 nanoparticles at
nanoparticles at different diameters in water is shown. The resonance peaks shift toward the red
region and get broader when the diameters of the nanoparticles become larger. The position of
the peaks and the width of the peak can be used to estimate the diameters of the nanoparticles.
Light scattering intensity can be plasmonic resonance enhanced if the incident light is around the
resonance frequency. The cross sections for the silver nanoparticles can be resonance enhanced
by more than 10 times when the incident light varies from ~300nm to ~400nm in water. Since it
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is only possible for the silver nanoparticles, light scattering from other particles can be filtered or
blocked efficiently. This will eliminate other potential disturbances from the dust particles for the
velocity measurement.
Figure 3. Comparison of light scattering spectra among silver nanoparticles with different
diameters in water.
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3. Nanoparticle Synthesis and nPIV
Silver nanoparticles are synthesized by chemical reduction method. First, AgNO3 (90 mg) is
dissolved in 500 mL of deionized water. After the solution is boiling, 10 ml of 1% sodium citrate
(0.22 g of trisodium citrate, C6H5Na307, dissolved in 22 mL of H2O) is added into it. The color of
solution gradually turns gray in a few minutes. The mixture solution is kept boiling for 1 hour.
Then the production containing silver nanoparticles is irradiated by an intensive laser beam (532
nm, 393 mJ/cm2) for about 30 minutes. The silver nanoparticles are melted by the laser beam to
form the nanoparticles at about 8-10 nanometers. These nanoparticles are used as seeds for
further synthesis. After the same amount and concentration of AgNO3 solution is boiled again,
8.3 ml of seeds solution and 10 ml of 1% sodium citrate are added into them. Keeping boiling
for 1 hour, the mixture solution is cooled to the room temperature. The Ag nanoparticles in the
solution are finally filtered with 100 nm filters and used for the nano-PIV measurement.
Hitachi S 3500 SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) is used to characterize the actual
morphologies of silver nanoparticles. The nanoparticles have spherical shapes. The diameters of
those nanoparticles are approximately 35 nm. The silver nanoparticles used in the experiments
are measured, shown in Figure 4. The size distribution of nanoparticles is counted, shown in
Figure 5.
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Figure 4. Morphologies of dry silver nanoparticles record by SEM. The bar represents 100nm.
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Figure 6. Size distribution of silver nanoparticles in solution measured by DLS
Size distribution of the nanoparticles is recorded by a dynamic light scattering (DLS) system
(Brookhaven Instruments BI-2000SM goniometer equipped with a PCI BI-9000AT digital
correlator). The laser wavelength is 633 nm. The detector is located at the scattering angle of 90º.
The DLS provides the hydrodynamic size distribution of the particles in the solution by the
autocorrelation calculation of the Brownian motion of particles. Sizes distribution of Ag
nanoparticles is shown in figure 6. The diameter for most nanoparticles is ~52.1 nm. There are
also minor proportions in the size distribution. Especially the nanoparticles less than 10 nm in
the solution are common for the synthesis process. In addition, the sizes of particles obtained
from DLS are always greater than those from electron microscopes due to hydrodynamic effects
in the water [31].
The prepared nanoparticle solutions can be examined using a standard dark field microscopy.
Shown in Figure 7(a), the silver nanoparticles were recorded with an exposure time of 3.3 ms
under the illumination of white light. The image under the illumination of a single laser pulse
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(532nm, 10ns duration) was shown in Figure 7(b). The sizes of spots in the images represented
(a) (b)
Figure 7. Dark field images of Ag nanoparticles illuminated by (a) a white light source.
Exposure time for the camera is 4 ms. (b) a laser pulse at 532nm, exposure time equals to the
Following the analysis used in µPIV, the final sizes of spots recorded by CCD can be estimated
1/2
1
2
where de is the final imaged particle diameter, M is image magnification (100 ×), dp is the
particle diameter (~35 nm), λ is the light wavelength (500 nm or 532 nm), , NA is the numerical
aperture of objective lens (1.4). So the final imaged particle diameter of silver nanoparticles is
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3.3 Velocity Measurement
(a) (b)
Figure 8. (a) The diagram of nano-PIV setup used dark field illumination, (b) the schematics of
(a)
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(b)
(c)
light dark- field illumination. (a) Image of nanoparticles at an exposure of 2 milliseconds and
Instantaneous velocity map of the flow (in m/s). Flow speed is 0.01ml/sec, (b) Flow speed is
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A far field plasmonic enhanced nano-Particle Image Velocimetry (nPIV) has been demonstrated
by integrating the common PIV technique with the single nanoparticle tracking technique. As
shown in Figure 8, a laser or white light source has been focused on a micro channel (shown in
Figure 8 B) by a dark field condenser. The flow seeded with nanoparticles has been pumped
through the channel using syringe pump. A fast camera (TSI- HS650) with an image intensifier
has been used to capture scattering light from the nanoparticles. The movement of the flow is
accompanied by the displacement of the seeding particles. Since only the scattering light from
nanoparticles. By comparing two consecutive images of the flow field with auto-/cross-
correlation technique, we can follow the movement of the nanoparticles so that a 2D velocity
profile has been obtained as shown in Figure 9. The flow velocity is about 0.5 mm/s.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, a novel far-field plasmonic resonance enhanced nanoparticle-seeded Particle Image
Velocimetry (nPIV) has been demonstrated to measure the velocity in a micro channel.
Calculations based on Discrete Dipole Approximation are conducted to optimize light scattering
for the nanoparticles in two media: water and air. The diffraction-limited plasmonic resonance
enhanced images of silver nanoparticles at different diameters have been recorded. By using
standard PIV techniques, the velocity profiles within the micro channel have been determined
from the images. Velocity of 0.5mm/s has been successfully measured by the technique.
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5. Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the University of Tennessee and Joint Directed Research Direction
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