Modeling and Experimental Investigations of Nanostructured Ag Thin Films Produced by Oblique-Angle Deposition and Its SERS Performance
Source abstract
Abstract
The growth mechanism of nanocolumnar silver thin film deposited on a smooth silicon substrate using electron beam evaporation process at an oblique angle was simulated with the Kinetic Monte Carlo method. Following the simulated silver nanostructured thin film, a further computational simulation was done using COMSOL for surface-enhanced Raman scattering effects. The simulation results were compared against corresponding experimental results, which demonstrated high agreement between simulation results and experimental data. It was found that as the incident deposition angle increased, the density of the Ag thin film significantly decreased and the surface roughness increased. When the incident deposition angle was at 75° and 85°, the resulting nanocolumnar structure was significantly tilted. For Ag thin films deposited at all investigated angles, surface-enhanced Raman scattering effects were observed. Particularly, the Ag nanocolumns deposited at 85° showed remarkable Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering effects. This was seen in both COMSOL simulations and experimental results: Enhancement factors were 2 × 107 in COMSOL simulation and 3.3 × 105 in the experiment.
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Research context
OpenAlex topics: Optical Coatings and Gratings · Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications · Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
School of Opto-electronical Engineering, Xi’an Technological University, Xi’an 710021, China
Institute of Thin Film, Sensors and Imaging, School of Computing, Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley G72 0LH, UK
School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710062, China
References (28)
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