Picosecond Bessel Beam Fabricated Pure, Gold-Coated Silver Nanostructures for Trace-Level Sensing of Multiple Explosives and Hazardous Molecules.

ABSTRACT: A zeroth-order, non-diffracting Bessel beam, generated by picosecond laser pulses (1064 nm, 10 Hz, 30 ps) through an axicon, was utilized to perform pulse energy-dependent (12 mJ, 16 mJ, 20 mJ, 24 mJ) laser ablation of silver (Ag) substrates in air. The fabrication resulted in finger-like Ag nanostructures (NSs) in the sub-200 nm domain and obtained structures were characterized using the FESEM and AFM techniques. Subsequently, we employed those Ag NSs in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) studies achieving promising sensing results towards trace-level detection of six different hazardous materials (explosive molecules of picric acid (PA) and ammonium nitrate (AN), a pesticide thiram (TH) and the dye molecules of Methylene Blue (MB), Malachite Green (MG), and Nile Blue (NB)) along

SUBMITTER: Banerjee D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9228845 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature