Gold-coated nanoporous substrates for SERS studies

摘要

The Raman signal of inelastically scattered photons represents the fingerprint of a chemical molecule. Therefore, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can be employed as the selective mechanism for an extraordinary optics sensor sensitive enough to detect a single molecule. Such sensitivity makes SERS ideal to detect chemicals at parts per billion to parts per trillion concentrations. SERS studies benefit from a signal enhancing substrate that is both reproducible and cost effective. Commercial substrates produced by electron beam lithography cost approximately $100 a piece to manufacture and can only be used once. The purpose of this study is to design a SERS substrate that offers enhancement equivalent to the commercial standard and is cheaper to produce. Experiments confirm that gold (Au) coated nano-pores can be used as an optimal SERS substrate offering a promising enhancement with durability that rival commercial products.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.