A Chemical Route To Increase Hot Spots on Silver Nanowires for.pdfVIP

Article /Langmuir A Chemical Route To Increase Hot Spots on Silver Nanowires for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Application Madeline Shuhua Goh,? Yih Hong Lee,? Srikanth Pedireddy,? In Yee Phang,? Weng Weei Tjiu,? Joel Min Rui Tan, ? and Xing Yi Ling*,? ?Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637371 ?Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, 3 Research Link, Singapore 117602 S *Supporting Information ABSTRACT: The e?ective number of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy SERS active hot spots on plasmonic nanostructures is the most crucial factor in ensuring high sensitivity in SERS sensing platform. Here we demonstrate a chemical etching method to increase the surface roughness of one-dimensional Ag nanowires, targeted at creating more SERS active hot spots along Ag nanowire’s longitudinal axis for increased SERS detection sensitivity. Silver nanowires were ?rst synthesized by the conventional polyol method and then subjected to chemical etching by NH OH and H O mixture. The surfaces of silver nanowires 4 2 2 were anisotropically etched o? to create miniature “beads on a string” features with increased surface roughness while their crystallinity was preserved. Mapping of single-nanowire SERS measurements showed that the chemical etching method has overcome the limitation of conventional one-dimensional Ag nanowires with limited SERS active area at the tips to produce etched Ag nanowires with an increase in Raman hot spots and polarization-independent SERS signals across tens of micrometers length scale. ■ INTRODUCTION near-?eld optical microscopy a-SNOM .30 a-SNOM mapping showed strong intensities localized close to the vertices, Plasmonic nanostructures of noble metals such as gold and silver have been extensively studied for surface-enhanced