More-energetic vapors of in situ plasmon-activated water as an environmentally friendly etchant

Abstract

These days, environmental science and sustainable development issues are highly valued. Also, water is the most abundant and most easily recyclable substance on earth, and it is also the most environmentally friendly solvent and reactant in the fields of chemistry and physics. In this work, in situ vapor of plasmon-activated water (PAW) was first utilized to modify surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active Ag substrates by simple environmentally friendly etching. Compared to etching with conventional deionized water (DIW) vapor, higher SERS signals and lower relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the model compound, rhodamine 6G (R6G), were observed on PAW vapor-etched SERS-active Ag substrates. These developed SERS technologies were also effective for alternative detection methodologies of the pesticides tricyclazole (TC) and sulfoxaflor (SF) and for serum from patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Encouragingly, the limit of detection (LOD) of TC was determined to be extremely low at 5 ppb based on PAW vapor etching. The environmentally friendly etching strategies we developed provide innovative ideas for green science that avoid using harmful reagents.