Mass-production of flexible and transparent Te-Au nylon SERS substrate with excellent mechanical stability

Abstract

In the past two decades, the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has flourished and many rational strategies have been reported for the successful construction of SERS substrates. However, it still lacks the mass-production and programmability for practical applications with arbitrary configurations, and it is highly desirable to develop SERS substrates with strong signal enhancement, large-scale surface area, easy fabrication and low cost. Herein, we demonstrate a large-area fabrication (1.5 m × 5 m) of low-cost (18.8 dollars per square meter), highly sensitive, flexible and transparent SERS substrate by a simple solution process. The high sensitivity of SERS substrate using 3,3′-diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide (DTTCI) as probe molecules is strongly dependent on the density and diameter of gold nanoparticles (NPs) on the surface of nylon mesh with the best enhancement factor (EF) of 9.17 × 1010 and the SERS detection limit of DTTCI molecules is as low as 10-14 M which shows no obvious degradation even after 10,000 cycles of fatigue test, high temperature (above than 160 °C) and acid-alkali treatment, indicating their excellent stability for the performance in all climates.