Preparation of copper sphere segment void templates for electrochemical SERS and their use to study the interaction of amino acids with copper under potentiostatic control

Abstract

We describe a simple method to prepare nanostructured copper electrodes based on electrodeposition of copper through a polystyrene nanosphere template to produce a copper sphere segment void (SSV) structure. We show that the SSV copper electrodes give a large SER enhancement under potentiostatic control and we use the SSV copper electrodes to study the adsorption of aromatic and non-aromatic amino acids in basic solution.