Optimization of Nanoparticle-Based SERS Substrates through Large-Scale Realistic Simulations.

ABSTRACT: Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has become a widely used spectroscopic technique for chemical identification, providing unbeaten sensitivity down to the single-molecule level. The amplification of the optical near field produced by collective electron excitations -plasmons- in nanostructured metal surfaces gives rise to a dramatic increase by many orders of magnitude in the Raman scattering intensities from neighboring molecules. This effect strongly depends on the detailed geometry and composition of the plasmon-supporting metallic structures. However, the search for optimized SERS substrates has largely relied on empirical data, due in part to the complexity of the structures, whose simulation becomes prohibitively demanding. In this work, we use state-of-the-art electromagnetic

SUBMITTER: Solis DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5319398 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature