Fabrication of Plasmonically Active Substrates Using Engineered Silver Nanostructures for SERS Applications
Journal article, 2017

Demanding applications in sensing, metasurfaces, catalysis, and biotechnology require fabrication of plasmonically active substrates. Herein, we demonstrate a bottom-up, versatile, and scalable approach that relies on direct growth of silver nanostructures from seed particles that were immobilized on polymer brush-grafted substrates. Our approach is based on (i) the uniform and tunable assembly of citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles on poly(ethylene glycol) brushes to serve as seeds and (ii) the use of hydroquinone as a reducing agent, which is extremely selective to the presence of seed particles, confining the growth of silver nanostructures on the surface of the substrate. The diameter of the seed particles, concentration, as well as ratio of reactants and duration of the growth process are investigated for large-area growth of silver nanostructures with high surface coverage and plasmonic activity. The resulting silver nanostructures exhibit high levels of surface-enhanced Raman scattering activity at two different laser lines and allow detection of molecules at concentrations as low as 10 pM. The plasmonic properties of the silver nanostructures are further studied using ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy. Spatially defined silver nanostructures are fabricated through the seed particles that are patterned via soft lithography, showing the capabilities of the presented approach in device applications.

SERS

silver nanostructures

hydroquinone

seed-mediated synthesis

plasmonics

Author

Menekse Sakir

Erciyes University

S. Pekdemir

Erciyes University

A. Karatay

Ankara Universitesi

Betül Kücüköz

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Hasan H. Ipekci

Erciyes University

A. Elmali

Ankara Universitesi

Gokhan Demirel

Gazi University

M. S. Onses

Erciyes University

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

1944-8244 (ISSN) 1944-8252 (eISSN)

Vol. 9 45 39795-39803

Subject Categories

Chemical Engineering

DOI

10.1021/acsami.7b12279

More information

Created

12/14/2017