title: Superhydrophobic SERS chip based on a Ag coated natural taro-leaf.
abstract: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates based on plasmonic nanostructures allow for label-free and fingerprinting molecular detection with ultrahigh sensitivity and selectivity, but their complicated and high-cost fabrication remains a challenge for practical applications and commercialization of SERS technology. Herein, we developed a facile and low-cost natural SERS substrate based on silver coated taro leaf (Taro-leaf@Ag) that exhibits ordered micro-papillae and secondary crossed nanoplates. The micro-papillae exhibited superior superhydrophobicity for analyte enrichment and the secondary crossed nanoplates provided rich SERS hot spots, which together lead to highly sensitive SERS detection with a detection limit as low as 10(-8) M. Moreover, the crossed nanoplates were uniformly distributed such that reproducible SERS measurements with a 9.7% variation over 1274 spectra was achieved. The high SERS sensitivity and reproducibility as well as the facile and low-cost fabrication make the Taro-leaf@Ag a promising natural SERS substrate for future practical biochemical detection methods.
authors.affiliation: Center of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) and Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. apwjzh@cityu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Jian-An
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012, China. yonglaizhang@jlu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yong-Lai
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Center of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) and Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. apwjzh@cityu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Yingqi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012, China. yonglaizhang@jlu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xu-Lin
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Center of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) and Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. apwjzh@cityu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Ming-Liang
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Center of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) and Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. apwjzh@cityu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Wenjun
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang