Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra of three kinds of azo-dye molecules on silver nanoparticles prepared by electrolysis

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles were prepared by an electrolysis method. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were employed to detect the morphology of these particles. Based on this high active surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate, three kinds of azo-dye molecules (Methyl Yellow, Methyl Red and Sudan Red 1) were carefully studied. Using the Gaussian’98 software, we gained the calculation result of these three kinds of azo-dye molecules, and found that the calculation results had good concordance with the experimental one. The detection limit of azo-dye molecules on the silver nanoparticles can go down to 10−5mol/l, which indicated that these particles were an active SERS substrate.