A method to enhance surface plasmon coupled fluorescence from copper nanoparticles on silicon nanowires is presented. Owing to resonant plasmons oscillation on the surface of Cu/Si nanostructure, the fluorescence peaks of several lanthanide ions (praseodymium ions, Pr3+, neodymium ions Nd3+, holmium ions Ho3+, and erbium ions Er3+) were markedly enhanced with the enhancement of maximal 2 orders of magnitude, which was larger than that caused by unsupported Cu nanoparticles. These results might be explained by the local field overlap originated from the closed and fixed copper nanoparticles on silicon nanowires.
