Reproducible deep-UV SERRS on aluminium nanovoids

Sigle, Daniel O., Perkins, Elaine A., Baumberg, Jeremy J. and Mahajan, Sumeet (2013) Reproducible deep-UV SERRS on aluminium nanovoids. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 4 (9), 1449-1452. (doi:10.1021/jz4004813).

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with deep-UV-excitation is of particular interest because a large variety of biomolecules such as amino acids exhibit electronic transitions in the UV spectral range and resonant excitation dramatically increases the cross-section of the associated vibrational modes. Despite its potential, UV-SERS is still little explored. We present a novel straightforward scalable route to fabricate aluminium nanovoids for reproducible SERS in the deep-UV without the need of expensive lithographic techniques. We adopt a modified template-stripping method utilizing a soluble template and self-assembled polymer spheres to create nanopatterned aluminium films. We observe high surface enhancement of approximately six orders of magnitude, with excitation in the deep-UV (244 nm) on structures optimized for this wavelength. This work thus enables sensitive detection of organics and bio-molecules, normally non-resonant at visible wavelengths, with deep-UV surface-enhanced resonant Raman scattering on reproducible and scalable substrates.

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Contributors

Author: Sumeet Mahajan

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