title: Controlled Veiling of Silver Nanocubes with Graphene Oxide for Improved Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Detection.
abstract: Hybrid graphene oxide (GO)/metal nanocomposites have been recently proposed as novel surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. Despite an increasing interest in these systems, standardization in their fabrication process is still lacking but urgently required to support their use for real-life applications. In this work we investigate how the assembly of GO should be conducted to control adsorption geometry and optical properties at the interface with plasmonic nanostructures as monolayer assemblies of silver nanocubes, by tuning main experimental parameters including GO concentration and self-assembly time. We finally identified the experimental conditions for building up a close-fitting soft dressing of the plasmonic surface, which shows optimal characteristics for flexible and reliable SERS detection.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics , National Research Council, via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Banchelli
authors.affiliation: Institute for Complex Systems, National Research Council , via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tiribilli
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics , National Research Council, via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Marella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Angelis
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics , National Research Council, via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pini
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry "Hugo Schiff" and CSGI, University of Florence , via della Lastruccia 3-13, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriella
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Caminati
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics , National Research Council, via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Matteini
keywords: Raman spectroscopy; plasmonic nanoparticles; quartz crystal microbalance; self-assembly; sensing