One-Step Fabrication and Functionalization of Nanostructured Silicon Surfaces for Advanced Sensing Applications

Abstract

Direct laser processing of various materials with nano- and femtosecond (fs) laser pulses is known to be a facile and inexpensive technology for fabrication of various surface morphologies. Since ultrafast deposition of the laser energy to target material typically creates unique experimental conditions with extremely high pressure and temperature, we hypothesized that carrying out this process in anhydrous non-oxidizing environment containing functionalizing agent (fluorophore with vinyl functional group) will allow one-step fabrication and subsequent functionalization of the surface of high-n material. In this paper, we demonstrate successful implementation of this idea by fabricating high-spatial-frequency laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) via direct fs-pulse ablation of bulk crystalline Si wafer immersed in solution of N-vinylcarbazole in toluene. Laser processing with linearly polarized fs-laser pulses was found to produce LIPSS with a characteristic period around 100 nm functionalized with N-vinylcarbazole molecules via photo-activated hydrosililation reaction. The unique LIPSS with hierarchical roughness and remarkable light trapping performance functionalized with sensory fluorophore show high sensitivity due to implementation of surface enhanced fluorescence effect. By using N-vinylcarbazole as functionalizing agent we demonstrate one-step fabrication of high-performance sensor for detecting nitrobenzene in water with a detection limit of 40 nM.