Ground-state charge transfer as a mechanism for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Abstract

A model is presented for the contribution of ground-state charge transfer between a metal and adsorbate to surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). It is shown that this contribution can be understood using the vibronic theory for calculating Raman intensities. The enhancement is due to vibronic coupling of the molecular ground state to the metal states, the coupling mechanism being a modulation of the ground-state charge-transfer energy by the molecular vibrations. An analysis of the coupling operator gives the selection rules for this process, which turn out to be dependent on the overall symmetry of the adsorbate-metal system, even if the charge transfer is small enough for the symmetry of the adsorbate to remain the same as that of the free molecule. It is shown that the model can yield predictions on the properties of SERS, e.g., specificity to adsorption geometry, appearance of forbidden bands, dependence on the applied potential, and dependence on the excitation wavelength. The predictions are in good agreement with experimental results. It is also deduced from this model that in many cases atomic-scale roughness is a prerequisite for the observation of SERS. A result on the magnitude of the enhancement can only be given in a crude approximation. Although in most cases an additional electromagnetic enhancement seems to be necessary to give an observable signal, this charge-transfer mechanism should be important in many SERS systems.