Abstract
Introduction: Semiconductor-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates with high stability and reproducibility have become one of the essential analytical tools in the analysis of chemical and biological at trace levels. Herein, a growth of the hexagonal-wrapped ZnO nanorod arrays decorating with Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) at different concentrations of Ag was proposed.
 Methods: The crystallinity, morphology, chemical composition, and optical properties of the prepared samples were investigated by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Raman system, respectively.
 Results: The results revealed that the SERS performance of ZnO NRs incorporating with AgNPs exhibited higher detection of crystal violet (CV) probe molecules at a low concentration of 108 M than that of the pristine ZnO NRs. This effect originates from the localized surface plasmonic resonance of AgNPs that could cause a strong electromagnetic field and synergistic effects of Ag, ZnO, and CV molecules in ZnONRs@Ag/CV SERS system.
 Conclusion: These outcomes reveal that AgNPs play a crucial role in enhanced SERS performance for chemical and biological detection of ZnO substrate.
Highlights
Semiconductor-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates with high stability and reproducibility have become one of the essential analytical tools in the analysis of chemical and biological at trace levels
It is noted that the vibration mode attributed to the Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods is at 438 cm−1, which corresponds to the E2 optical phonon band 19
The results indicate that ZnONRs/Ag is responsible for amplification of SERS signals based on i) plasmonic hot spots that can efficiently focus electromagnetic fields at/near the metal-semiconductor interface; ii) the charge transfer process between Fermi levels of the ZnO NRs, Ag, and crystal violet (CV) molecules; and iii) the chemical interactions between semiconductor and molecules related to matching of the energy structure band in the system
Summary
Semiconductor-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates with high stability and reproducibility have become one of the essential analytical tools in the analysis of chemical and biological at trace levels. The EM enhancement is obtained by the electric field induced the localized surface plasmonic resonance (LSPR) related to noble metal nanostructures with a typical enhancement factor of [104-107] folds, while the CM enhancement is directly correlated with the charge transfer process between adsorbed molecules and the substrate materials such as semiconductors with enhancement factors in the range [10−100] times [3,4]. Most of these studies reported that plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NPs) were employed for SERS; it supplies highly sensitive detections based on the enhancement of the EM.
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