title: Fabrication of hexagonally patterned flower-like silver particle arrays as surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates.
abstract: Hierarchical assembly of plasmonic nanostructures can induce high surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity. However, it is a challenge to uniformly disperse the hierarchical nanostructures onto a planar substrate to achieve SERS signal reproducibility. This report presents a facile route to fabricate a hexagonally patterned flower-like silver particle array as the SERS substrate. First, hexagonally ordered silver hemisphere arrays with smooth surface are molded in the pores of an anodic aluminum oxide template. Ag-nanosheets are then electrodeposited onto the surface of individual silver hemispheres. The numerous nano-edges and nano-gaps between adjacent nanosheets render a large number of hot spots, leading to high SERS activity over a larger area of chip. The silver flower-like array is employed as the SERS substrate, which is able to detect 0.1 nM rhodamine 6 G and 1 μM 3,3',4,4'-tetrachlorobiphenyl (PCB-77, a persistent organic pollutant).
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, and Anhui Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Haibin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Guowen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Zhongbo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Chuhong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Fangming
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ke
authors.forename: Zhaoming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Nianqiang
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wu