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Silver-decorated ZnO hexagonal nanoplate arrays as SERS-active substrates: An experimental and simulation study

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Abstract

We have fabricated Ag-decorated ZnO nanoplate arrays by combining water-bath heating toward ZnO hexagonal nanoplate arrays and subsequent decoration of Ag films or nanoparticles on the ZnO surfaces by magnetron sputtering or photoreduction. Experimental surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) results show that Ag-film-ZnO hybrid substrates with different Ag sputtering times exhibit a large difference in enhanced SERS signals for Rhodamine 6G (10−7 M). Atomic force microscope analysis reveals that two kinds of positions create abundant “hot spots” in this SERS substrate: one is located at the gap between adjacent separate Ag-film-ZnO hybrid nanoplates, and the other is located at the V-grooves formed by two adjacent interlaced Ag-film-ZnO hybrid nanoplates. The effects of simultaneous changes in interplate spacing and groove wall angle are considered to be the key factors affecting the SERS of our prepared Ag-film-ZnO hybrid substrates, which have also been evaluated by finite-difference time-domain simulation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Grant Nos. DUT13LK21 and DUT13ZD107), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61137005 and 11274055), National High-tech R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2011AA050516), and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (Grant No. NCET-12-0077).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Near-field Optics and Nanotechnology, School of Physics and Optoelectronic Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Kun Liu, Dawei Li, Rui Li, Qiao Wang, Shi Pan, Wei Peng & Maodu Chen

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  1. Kun Liu
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  2. Dawei Li
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  3. Rui Li
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Correspondence to Kun Liu.

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Liu, K., Li, D., Li, R. et al. Silver-decorated ZnO hexagonal nanoplate arrays as SERS-active substrates: An experimental and simulation study. Journal of Materials Research 28, 3374–3383 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2013.356

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