Tunable Silver Nanoparticle Arrays by Hot Embossing and Sputter Deposition for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy has attracted a lot of attention over the past 30 years. Due to its extreme sensitivity and label-free detection capability, it has shown great potential in areas such as analytical chemistry, biochemistry, and environmental science. However, the major challenge is to manufacture large-scale highly SERS active substrates with high controllability, good reproducibility, and low cost. In this study, we report a novel method to fabricate uniform silver nanoparticle arrays with tunable particle sizes and interparticle gaps. Using hot embossing and sputtering techniques, we were able to batch produce the silver nanoparticle arrays SERS active substrate with consistent quality and low cost. We showed that the proposed SERS active substrate has good uniformity and high reproducibility. Experimental results show that the SERS enhancement factor is affected by silver nanoparticles size and interparticle gaps. Furthermore, the enhancement factor of the SERS signal obtained from Rhodamine 6G (R6G) probe molecules was as high as 1.12 × 107. Therefore, the developed method is very promising for use in many SERS applications.