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Hierarchical nanoarchitectonics with three-layer (Ag/Ag2O/Ag) spherical nanoarrays with highly sensitive SERS performance

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Abstract

In recent years, multilayer metal arrays have received much attention in the fabrication of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. In this study, we prepared three-layer spherical nanoarrays by depositing double layers of Ag on hexagonal close-packed polystyrene (PS) sphere arrays and oxidizing the bottom layer of Ag to form oxide layer at ambient conditions, obtaining Ag/Ag2O/Ag three-layer spherical nanoarrays. By optimizing the thickness of silver layers and medium oxide layer, the SERS activity can be enhanced effectively. Using R6G molecule as the analyst, the SERS enhancement factor of the substrate can be up to 3.93 × 107, indicating that the substrate has high SERS sensitivity. It was found by the experiment that the SERS performance of the three-layer Ag nanosphere array was about 5.2 times stronger than that of the single-layer Ag nanosphere array with the same thickness, and it had good reproducibility and uniformity. It shows that ultra-thin oxide layer in the three-layer structure played a key role in SERS enhancement.

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All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the submitted article.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key Scientific Instrument and Equipment Development Projects of China (2011YQ030134); Talent introduction program of Nantong University (135420602125); University general project of Jiangsu Province (21KJB140015); and special thanks to Nantong University Analysis & Testing Center of for their support of the SEM characterization results in this work.

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  1. Jinyi Shen and Jing Wu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, Nantong University, No. 9, Seyuan Road, Nantong, 226019, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Jinyi Shen, Jing Wu, Yonglong Jin & Jinghuai Fang

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  1. Jinyi Shen
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  2. Jing Wu
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Contributions

JS contributed to conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, validation, investigation, resources, data curation, and writing—original draft. JW contributed to software, validation, formal analysis, and writing—review and editing. YJ contributed to software and project administration. JF contributed to investigation and formal analysis.

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Correspondence to Yonglong Jin or Jinghuai Fang.

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Shen, J., Wu, J., Jin, Y. et al. Hierarchical nanoarchitectonics with three-layer (Ag/Ag2O/Ag) spherical nanoarrays with highly sensitive SERS performance. Appl. Phys. A 129, 197 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-022-06368-1

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