Premium
Induced SERS activity in Ag@SiO 2 /Ag core‐shell nanosphere arrays with tunable interior insulator
Author(s) -
Liu LiWei,
Zhou QingWei,
Zeng ZhiQiang,
Jin MingLiang,
Zhou GuoFu,
Zhan RunZe,
Chen HuanJun,
Gao XingSen,
Lu XuBing,
Senz Stephan,
Zhang Zhang,
Liu JunMing
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of raman spectroscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.748
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1097-4555
pISSN - 0377-0486
DOI - 10.1002/jrs.4941
Subject(s) - materials science , raman scattering , nanostructure , insulator (electricity) , planar , detection limit , substrate (aquarium) , chemical vapor deposition , analyte , nanotechnology , raman spectroscopy , coating , optoelectronics , shell (structure) , optics , chemistry , composite material , physics , computer graphics (images) , oceanography , chromatography , geology , computer science
In this work, we demonstrated a bottom‐up growth of Ag@SiO 2 /Ag core‐shell nanosphere arrays with tunable SiO 2 interior insulator and the optimized surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate based on a nanostructure performed with both high sensitivity and large‐area uniformity. Their morphological, structural, and optical properties were characterized, and the induced SERS activities were investigated theoretically by the FDTD simulation and experimentally using analyte molecules. An ultrathin SiO 2 shell with tunable thickness can be synthesized pinhole‐free by a chemical vapor deposition, working as an interior insulator between the Ag core and Ag out‐layer coating. A detection limit as low as 10 −12 M and an enhancement factor up to 3 × 10 7 were obtained, and the SERS signal was highly reproducible with small standard deviation. The method opened up a way to create a new class of SERS activity sensor with high‐density ‘hot spots’, and it may play an important role in device design and the corresponding biological and food safety monitoring applications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.