Wafer-scale SERS metallic nanotube arrays with highly ordered periodicity

Abstract

The development of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates has been hampered by difficulties in scaling up fabrication and an inability to obtain meaningful, statistical measurements of nanostructures, due to the effects of molecular adsorption. This paper reports on the wafer-scale fabrication of ultrahigh sensitivity SERS substrates using metallic glass nanotube arrays with highly ordered periodicity. Systematic micro-Raman spectroscopic analysis revealed that the fabricated array could function as a SERS-active substrate with crystal violet (CV) and folic acid as analytes (detection limit of 10−11 M and enhancement factor of 4.21 × 106 for CV). This work was the first to fabricate wafer-scale metallic nanotube arrays with SERS properties, which represents an important step toward realizing the large-scale fabrication of ultrasensitive SERS-active materials.