高拉曼散射信号增强衬底材料:银分形网络

基于扩散限制聚集过程机制合成的大型银分形网络被用作表面增强拉曼散射活性衬底材料.此衬底材料具有很好的拉曼增强特性以及很宽的动态响应范围.其较大的增强因子可归结为高度局域化的等离激元共振.     

Highly Ordered Arrays of Particle-in-Bowl Plasmonic Nanostructures for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering

A highly ordered particle-in-bowl (PIB) nanostructure array is designed and fabricated to achieve large field enhancement for the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) application. This new type of PIB structure is composed of an Ag particle located at the bottom of an Au bowl, and the two are separated by a precisely controlled nanoscale dielectric layer. The fabrication of the PIB structure is based on the self-assembly of polystyrene spheres and atomic layer deposition (ALD), which allows good control of the metal particle size and gap distance, as well as large-scale ordering. Numerical simulation reveals a high enhancement of the local field at the nanogaps. The SERS performance of the PIB arrays, and the effects of the Ag particle size and the ALD dielectric layer thickness are characterized, results of which are in reasonable agreement with simulation. With Rhodmaine 6G as the probe molecule, the spatially averaged SERS enhancement factor is on the order of 3.8 × 10(7) and the local field enhancement from simulation can be up to 10(8) .     

High Surface‐Enhanced Raman Scattering Performance of Individual Gold Nanoflowers and Their Application in Live Cell Imaging

Molecular imaging techniques based on surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) face a lack of reproducibility and reliability, thus hampering its practical application. Flower‐like gold nanoparticles have strong SERS enhancement performance due to having plenty of hot‐spots on their surfaces, and this enhancement is not dependent on the aggregation of the particles. These features make this kind of particle an ideal SERS substrate to improve the reproducibility in SERS imaging. Here, the SERS properties of individual flower‐like gold nanoparticles are systematically investigated. The measurements reveal that the enhancement of a single gold nanoparticle is independent of the polarization of the excitation laser with an enhancement factor as high as 10⁸. After capping with Raman signal molecules and folic acid, the gold nanoflowers show strong Raman signal in the living cells, excellent targeting properties, and a high signal‐to‐noise ratio for SERS imaging.     

Highly controlled surface-enhanced Raman scattering chips using nanoengineered gold blocks

Well defined gold nanostructures of various sizes are fabricated on glass substrates using high-resolution electron-beam lithography/lift-off techniques and detailed surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) properties of crystal violet molecules are studied in order to elucidate electromagnetic (EM) field enhancement effects on the fabricated structures. SERS measurements are performed with high reproducibility using in situ Raman microspectroscopy in aqueous solution. An analysis based on EM theory is performed using field-enhancement factors obtained from finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations and the analysis reproduces experimental results very well. It is noteworthy, furthermore, that the proposed analytic method of EM effects on SERS allows the estimate of the ideal local temperature of gold nanostructures by canceling out the difference in EM field factors at Stokes and anti-Stokes Raman scattering wavelengths. Thus, these experimental results demonstrate that quantitative analysis based on EM theory can be obtained using highly controlled gold nanostructures for SERS measurements with high reproducibility, a result that is promising for the construction of a SERS analysis chip. Although no SERS chip reported so far has been usable for quantitative analysis, this study opens the door for construction of a quantitative SERS chip.     

Correct Spectral Conversion between Surface‐Enhanced Raman and Plasmon Resonance Scattering from Nanoparticle Dimers for Single‐Molecule Detection

Simultaneous measurement of surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) in nanoparticle dimers presents outstanding opportunities in molecular identification and in the elucidation of physical properties, such as the size, distance, and deformation of target species. SERS–LSPR instrumentation exists and has been used under limited conditions, but the extraction of SERS and LSPR readouts from a single measurement is still a challenge. Herein, the extraction of LSPR spectra from SERS signals is reported and a tool for measuring the interparticle distance from Raman enhancement data by the standardization of the SERS signal is proposed. The SERS nanoruler mechanism incorporates two important aspects (the LSPR scattering peak shift and the Raman shift for measuring interparticle distance), and signifies their exact one‐to‐one correspondence after spectral correction. The developed methodology is applied to calculate the interparticle distance between nanoparticle dimers from SERS signals, to detect and quantify DNA at the single‐molecule level in a base‐pair‐specific manner. It is also shown that the SERS nanoruler concept can be used in structural analysis for the specific detection of the interaction of immunoglobulin G (IgG) with its target from bianalyte Raman signals with identical shaping at single‐molecule resolution. The SERS profile shaping approach not only offers a new detection mechanism for single molecules, but also has excellent potential for studying protein interactions and the intracellular detection of mRNA.     

Synthesis and optical properties of cubic gold nanoframes

This paper describes a facile method of preparing cubic Au nanoframes with open structures via the galvanic replacement reaction between Ag nanocubes and AuCl₂ ⁻. A mechanistic study of the reaction revealed that the formation of Au nanoframes relies on the diffusion of both Au and Ag atoms. The effect of the edge length and ridge thickness of the nanoframes on the localized surface plasmon resonance peak was explored by a combination of discrete dipole approximation calculations and single nanoparticle spectroscopy. With their hollow and open structures, the Au nanoframes represent a novel class of substrates for applications including surface plasmonics and surface-enhanced Raman scattering.      

Preparation of gold nanorods with different aspect ratio and the optical response to solution refractive index

In this paper, we report that gold nanorods with different aspect ratios are controllably synthesised by a facile modified seed-mediated growth procedure. The growth rate of gold nanorods is lowered by adding H₂SO₄, and the yield of gold nanorods is improved. Increasing the concentration of AgNO₃ yields gold nanorods with different aspect ratios that differed from 1.83 to 5.04. To prevent aggregation of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)-capped gold nanorods and investigate the sensitivity to the solution refractive index, surface modification is carried out. After assembling poly (sodium-p-styrensulfonate) onto the surface of gold nanorods, the samples can disperse well in water and dimethyl sulfoxide. The localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) wavelength of the as-prepared gold nanorods redshifts with increasing the refractive index of the solvent and a good linear relationship between LSPR peaks and refractive index is achieved.