A general method for large-scale fabrication of Cu nanoislands/dragonfly wing SERS flexible substrates**Project supported by the Youth Fund Project of University Science and Technology Plan of Hebei Provincial Department of Education, China (Grant No. QN2015004) and the Doctoral Fund of Yanshan University, China (Grant No. B924).

Abstract

Noble metal nanorough surfaces that support strong surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is widely applied in the practical detection of organic molecules. A low-cost, large-area, and environment-friendly SERS-active substrate was acquired by sputtering inexpensive copper (Cu) on natural dragonfly wing (DW) with an easily controlled way of magnetron sputtering. By controlling the sputtering time of the fabrication of Cu on the DW, the performance of the SERS substrates was greatly improved. The SERS-active substrates, obtained at the optimal sputtering time (50 min), showed a low detection limit (10−6M) to 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP), a high average enhancement factor (EF, , excellent signal uniformity, and good reproducibility. In addition, the results of the 3D finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) simulation illustrated that the SERS-active substrates provided high-density “hot spots”, leading to a large SERS enhancement.