Plasmon induced enhancement of the electroluminescence signal of thin insulating polypropylene films

Chemical defects are of deleterious nature for the electrical properties of insulating polymers and can largely degrade their performance. Although these defects usually leave spectroscopic signatures in terms of characteristic luminescence peaks, it is nontrivial to assign, in an unambiguous way, the peaks to specific groups of defects because of the low intensity of the signal. In this work, we go beyond the traditional electroluminescence technique to record spectroscopic features of insulating polymers. By introducing a single plan of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) at the near-surface of thin polypropylene films, the electroluminescent signal is enhanced by plasmon-related process. The latter leads much higher intensity and phase-stabilization of the recorded spectra, thus improving the assignment of characteristic luminescence peaks.