Abstract
Silver Nano-trees (AgNTs) were synthesized by one-step electroless method with different densities via water or ethylene glycol (EG) on silicon substrate in one minute. The density of AgNTs is controlled by changing the concentration of silver nitrate in etchant solution. The absorption of NTs fabricated via EG is higher than absorption of NTs without EG. The AgNTs are employed as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and exhibit high sensitivity. The silver Nano-trees fabricated via ethylene glycol (AgNTs-EG) enhances the Raman spectrum of pyridine (Py) with higher enhancement factor. Moreover, the SERS-active substrates prepared by using EG were able to detect Pyridine with concentration as low as 0.005 mM, the ones fabricated by water could only detect Pyridine at concentration of 0.2 mM.
Highlights
Anisotropic crystal growth and diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) effect plays important roles in the fabrication of Nano-trees[30,31,32,33,34,35]
We propose a simple one-minute electroless etching process to fabricate AgNTs on Si substrate by using two types of etchant solutions with different concentrations of silver nitrate at room temperature
The weight percentage of silver deposited on silicon when the solution contained water only, is higher than the weight percentage of silver deposited on silicon in existence of ethylene glycol in all concentrations of AgNO3
Summary
Anisotropic crystal growth and diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) effect plays important roles in the fabrication of Nano-trees[30,31,32,33,34,35]. There are many theoretical attempts to explain the process of growing dendrites[36]. An oriented attachment mechanism was improved to explain the variety of hierarchical dendrite 0. Ethylene glycol (EG) can be utilized as reducing agent to synthesize metal nanoparticles by the polyol process[37]. EG can be used for producing silver nanoparticles as solvent and reducing agent to increase the stability of the obtained Ag colloid without adding costabilizers. The semiconducting substrate such as Si can be used for enhancing the effect of the SERS and improving the long-term stability by preventing the oxidization of silver[38,39]. We propose a simple one-minute electroless etching process to fabricate AgNTs on Si substrate by using two types of etchant solutions with different concentrations of silver nitrate at room temperature.
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