One-pot synthesis of hierarchical Ag mesoparticles with tunable morphology for ultrasensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering activity

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has shown inspiring prospects owing to its high sensitivity, convenience, and reliable results in molecular detection. Therefore, the fabrication of a sensitive, reproducible, and economical SERS material has attracted great interest. Herein, a facile one-pot synthetic system is presented to fabricate various hierarchical Ag mesoparticles (AgMPs) with well-tuned shapes to systematically study the morphology-related SERS activity. Of the morphologies produced herein, multibranched AgMPs exhibited the highest SERS sensitivity as particle-array substrates for rhodamine B detection, reaching a detection limit of 10−13M and an enhancement factor of >108. To investigate their practical effectiveness, multibranched AgMPs were used for in situ detection of a widely used growth regulator (forchlorfenuron) on an apple, showing legible Raman peaks at a low concentration of 0.01 ppm. This work provides a facile, robust, and low-cost route for the synthesis of uniform, shape-controlled Ag mesoparticles with high SERS performance.