Quartz fiber supported Ag nano-islands as flexible SERS substrate with stable distributed “hot-spot” in rapid detection of pesticide residue

Abstract

Island-shaped Ag nanoparticles are prepared under the support platform of quartz fabric by a simple chemical deposition method. The prepared flexible SERS substrate in this study demonstrates highly sensitive, excellent signal reproducibility and stability. The enhancement ability can be adjusted by varying concentration of Ag+ during synthesizing process, which would lead to the variation of size and gaps of Ag nanoparticles, thus affecting the LSPR effect. Moreover, the prepared SERS substrate shows great practical potential in rapid detection of contaminated fruit with different sampling method.