Abstract
Abstract Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy films with different Ag contents were prepared on polyimide by magnetron sputtering. The effects of Ag contents on the microstructure of self-grown Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy films were investigated using XRD, FESEM, EDS and TEM. The Ag content plays an important role in the size and number of uniformly distributed Ag nanoparticles spontaneously formed on the Mo–Ag alloy film surface, and the morphology of the self-grown Ag nanoparticles has changed significantly. Additionally, it is worth noting that the Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy films covered by a thin Ag film exhibits highly sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performance. The electric field distributions were calculated using finite-difference time-domain analysis to further prove that the SERS enhancement of the films is mainly determined by “hot spots” in the interparticle gap between Ag nanoparticles. The detection limit of the Ag film/Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy film for Rhodamine 6G probe molecules was 5 × 10−14 mol/L. Therefore, the novel type of the Ag film/Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy film can be used as an ideal SERS-active substrate for low-cost and large-scale production.
Highlights
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique, a highly sensitive fingerprint identification tool [1], has shown enormous application potential in various fields such as biomedical science [2], environmental monitoring [3], food and drug safety [4,5,6], catalysis [7], etc
The cross-sectional morphology of the Mo–Ag alloy films is shown in Figure 2(c2–f2), and the relative position relationship between the self-formed particles and the film is obviously different from the particles embedded in the traditional film [26]
The driving force for the formation of the Ag nanoparticles decreases with the increase of Ag content, resulting in a decrease in the number and particle size of the Ag nanoparticles in the Mo-51.2 at% Ag film compared with the Mo-38.5 at% Ag film
Summary
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique, a highly sensitive fingerprint identification tool [1], has shown enormous application potential in various fields such as biomedical science [2], environmental monitoring [3], food and drug safety [4,5,6], catalysis [7], etc. Considering that the Ag nanoparticles spontaneously formed on the surface of the annealed Ag–Zr alloy films and the nanophase effects in copper alloys [27,32,33,34,35,36,37], we attempt to selfgrown Ag nanoparticles with different morphologies on the surface of the deposited Mo–Ag alloy films by adjusting the Ag content at room temperature If this purpose can be achieved, a new type of SERS substrate with excellent performance can be obtained by combining the Ag nanoparticles with high SERS sensitivity and the Mo–Ag alloy films with good repeatability at room temperature. The effects of Ag contents on the microstructure and SERS performance of the Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy film were investigated
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