In Situ Probing of Laser Annealing of Plasmonic Substrates with Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy.

ABSTRACT: In this work, we in situ monitor the laser annealing of template-fabricated silver substrates using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) as a molecular probe. The annealing process, which exhibits a strong dependence on the laser power, yields a large (>50×) increase in the SERS of the immobilized 4-MBA. This increased SERS response is correlated with the changing substrate morphology using optical and scanning electron microscope images. We attribute the large enhancement to the formation of nanogaps facilitated by binding of the 4-MBA through both thiol and COO^- groups in a sandwich structure, resulting in both electromagnetic and chemical enhancement. This annealing effect, associated with the continuous increase of SERS intensity, was n

SUBMITTER: Ma C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6503518 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature