Fabrication of high performance surface enhanced Raman scattering substrates by a solid-state ionics method

Abstract

Silver nanostructures were prepared by a solid-state ionics method using fast ionic conductor RbAg4I5 films under a direct current electric field (DCEF). The surface morphology of the silver nanostructures grown under different constant current fields was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Rhodamine 6G (R6G) aqueous solutions were used as probe molecules to detect the Raman enhancement performance of the silver nanostructure substrates. The effect of external electric field current intensity on the surface morphology of the silver nanostructures during the preparation was studied in detail. The enhancement effect of the silver nanostructure surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates with different surface morphologies toward R6G was determined. We found that disordered silver nanowires (DSNW), ordered silver nanowires (OSNW), densely arranged silver nanobamboo arrays (SNBA) and compactly arranged silver nanobud clusters (SNBC) were respectively obtained when the constant current intensity was 3 μA, 5 μA, 8 μA and 12 μA under the same vacuum evaporation plating conditions. The limiting concentrations of R6G for these SERS substrates were found to be 10−7 mol l−1, 10−13 mol l−1, 10−13 mol l−1 and 10−16 mol l−1, respectively.