A new high-performance surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate with extremely high SERS activity was produced. This SERS substrate combines the advantages of Au film over nanosphere (AuFON) substrate and Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs). A three order enhancement of SERS was observed when Rhodamine 6G (R6G) was used as a probe molecule to compare the SERS effects of the new substrate and commonly used AuFON substrate. These new SERS substrates can detect R6G down to 1 nM. The new substrate was also utilized to detect melamine, and the limit of detection (LOD) is 1 ppb. A linear relationship was also observed between the SERS intensity at Raman peak 682 cm−1 and the logarithm of melamine concentrations ranging from 10 ppm to 1 ppb. This ultrasensitive SERS substrate is a promising tool for detecting trace chemical molecules because of its simple and effective fabrication procedure, high sensitivity and high reproducibility of the SERS effect.
A simple and novel self-assembly based process is presented in this paper for the fabrication of gold triangular nanocavity arrays. This process combines nanosphere lithography (NSL) with some standard MEMS technologies. A carboxylated polystyrene (PS) nanosphere bilayer with a relatively large area is fabricated on silicon wafer as the starting template by spin-coating. Oxygen plasma etching, metal deposition and lifting-off of the PS upper layer are then orderly carried out for the formation of triangular space, which is made up of Cr film and the remaining PS nanoparticles. Then silicon etching is used to transfer the triangle pattern onto the silicon wafer. Finally, a 50 nm thick gold layer is deposited on the pattern to fabricate gold triangular nanocavity arrays. With this strategy, both the period and the cavity size can be adjusted independently. This will allow the tuning of the optical properties for desired application.
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