Abstract
Ideal SERS substrates for sensing applications should exhibit strong signal enhancement, generate a reproducible and uniform response, and should be able to fabricate in large-scale and low-cost. Herein, we demonstrate low-cost, highly sensitive, disposable and reproducible SERS substrates by means of screen printing Ag nanoparticles (NPs) on a plastic PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) substrates. While there are many complex methods for the fabrication of SERS substrates, screen printing is suitable for large-area fabrication and overcomes the uneven radial distribution. Using as-printed Ag substrates as the SERS platform, detection of various commonly known chemicals have been done. The SERS detection limit of Rhodamine 6G (R6G) is higher than the concentration of 1 × 10−10 M. The relative standard deviation (RSD) value for 784 points on the detection of R6G and Malachite green (MG) is less than 20% revealing a homogeneous SERS distribution and high reproducibility. Moreover, melamine (MA) is detected in fresh liquid-milk without additional pretreatment, which may accelerate the application of rapid on-line detection of MA in liquid milk. Our screen printing method highlights the use of large-scale printing strategies for the fabrication of well-defined functional nanostructures with applications well beyond the field of SERS sensing.
Highlights
Ideal SERS substrates for sensing applications should exhibit strong signal enhancement, generate a reproducible and uniform response, and should be able to fabricate in large-scale and low-cost
The high-resolution Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) (HRTEM) image is shown in Fig. 1b revealing the lattice spacing of the Ag nanocrystal is 0.236 nm that corresponds to the (111) plane of Ag
The corresponding Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) patterns show the generation of hexagonal diffraction pattern demonstrating that as-prepared Ag NPs are single crystals
Summary
Ideal SERS substrates for sensing applications should exhibit strong signal enhancement, generate a reproducible and uniform response, and should be able to fabricate in large-scale and low-cost. Printing technology is a strong candidate for high throughput, facile and cost-effective fabrication of large-scale orderly functional patterns or arrays. It is purely an additive method in which an ink is added depending on the necessity. The screen printing technique is often employed to manufacture the conductive lines and electrodes in large scale, but its application to the fabrication of flexible and highly reproducible SERS substrates or arrays are scarce so far. Efforts have been devoted to solve the aforementioned problem On this regard, we present a large-scale fabrication method to manufacture low-cost, disposable, flexible and highly reproducible SERS array substrates by employing a high-throughput screen printing method. The results reveal that the as-printed SERS dot arrays can be used for SERS substrates
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