Plasmonic rhenium trioxide self-assembled microtubes for highly sensitive, stable and reproducible surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy detection

Abstract

Compared with noble metals, improving the sensitivity of semiconducting surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates is of great significance to their fundamental research and practical application of Raman spectroscopy. Herein, a simple chemical method is developed to synthesize a rhenium trioxide (ReO3) microtubes assembled with highly crystalline nanoparticles. The ReO3 microtubes show a strong and well-defined surface plasmon resonance (SPR) behavior in visible region, which is rare for non-noble metals. As a low-cost SERS substrate, the plasmonic ReO3 microtubes exhibit a Raman enhancement factor of 8.9 × 105 and a lowest detection limit of 1.0 × 10−9 mol/L for phenolic pollutants. Moreover, these ReO3 microtubule SERS substrates show excellent chemical stability and can resist the corrosion of strong acids and bases.