One-pot synthesis of silver nanoparticle-coated fiberglass as a reusable and flexible SERS substrate of malachite green

Abstract

Raman spectroscopy is known as a powerful technique to identify molecules. In addition, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates were used to produce a strong Raman signal. However, the synthesis of SERS substrates is challenging. A simple step synthesis procedure is required to produce fast, low-cost, flexible and reusable SERS substrate. In this work, we demonstrated a one-pot synthesis of silver nanoparticle-coated fiberglass that was used as a SERS substrate. Silver nanoparticles were grown and deposited in less than 35 s on fiberglass. The silver nanoparticles were firmly deposited on the fiberglass. Our SERS substrates were able to enhance the Raman signal of malachite green by more than 1000 times. Furthermore, we also show that our SERS substrates were very flexible and reusable more than 5 times. Our simple procedure of SERS substrate can be developed further as a commercial SERS substrate.