A single-step fabrication of Ag nanoparticles and CVD graphene hybrid nanostructure as SERS substrate

Abstract

Functionalization and modification of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth graphene are crucial to develop new surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate for practical applications. In this study, a hybrid nanostructure of AgNPs@G was designed considering taking advantage of both the electromagnetic enhancement mechanism (EM) and chemical enhancement mechanism (CM) thanks to AgNPs and CVD growth graphene via a single-step fabrication. The size distribution of AgNPs with a perfect single crystalline structure obtained as 2–10 nm and uniformly decorated on CVD graphene surface. The excellent integration of AgNPs and graphene has been confirmed by TEM and XPS studies. The SERS activity of the fabricated AgNPs@G nanocomposite has been examined using Rhodamine 6G (R6G) as a probe molecule with different concentrations. The value of enhancement factor (EF) calculated as 7.2 × 104 suggests that the AgNPs@G nanostructure substrates have perfect SERS properties. The results in this paper demonstrate that the fabricated hybrid nanostructure AgNPs@G can be promising SERS substrate in many practical applications.