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Controllable fabrication of large-scale hierarchical silver nanostructures for long-term stable and ultrasensitive SERS substrates

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Abstract

In this work, we aim to prepare effective and long-term stable hierarchical silver nanostructures serving as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates simply via displacement reaction on Aluminum foils. In our experiments, Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) is used as cationic surfactant to control the velocity of displacement reaction as well as the hierarchical morphology of the resultant. We find that the volume ratio of CTAB to AgNO3 plays a dominant role in regulating the hierarchical structures besides the influence of displacement reaction time. These as-prepared hierarchical morphologies demonstrate excellent SERS sensitivity, structural stability and reproducibility with low values of relative standard deviation less than 20 %. The high SERS analytical enhancement factor of ~6.7 × 108 is achieved even at the concentration of Crystal Violet (CV) as low as 10−7 M, which is sufficient for single-molecule detection. The detection limit of CV is 10−9 M in this study. We believe that this simple and rapid approach integrating advantages of low-cost production and high reproducibility would be a promising way to facilitate routine SERS detection and will get wide applications in chemical synthesis.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61371057), the National Special Fund for the Development of Major Research Equipment and Instruments (Grant No. 2011YQ03013403) and the Open Research Fund Program of Jiangsu Provincial Key Lab. of Center support this work for Photon Manufacturing Science and Technology (GZ201309).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, Nantong University, No. 9, Seyuan Road, Nantong, 226019, Jiangsu, China

    Jing Wu, Jinghuai Fang & Mingfei Cheng

  2. State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Xiao Gong

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  1. Jing Wu
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Correspondence to Mingfei Cheng or Xiao Gong.

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Wu, J., Fang, J., Cheng, M. et al. Controllable fabrication of large-scale hierarchical silver nanostructures for long-term stable and ultrasensitive SERS substrates. Appl. Phys. A 122, 844 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-016-0311-5

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