화학공학소재연구정보센터
Applied Surface Science, Vol.402, 154-160, 2017
ZnO/Ag composite nanoflowers as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering
We used a simple two-step hydrothermal method to synthesize ZnO nanoflowers (NFs) evenly decorated with silver nanoparticles (NPs) and evaluated their efficiency as organic-molecule detectors during surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). These three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically structured substrates exhibited high SERS sensitivity with respect to Rhodamine 6G (R6G), with the enhancement factor being as high as 10(7). And the characteristic peaks of R6G could be identified even at the concentration as low as 10(-12) M. SERS maps collected through a point-by-point evaluation suggested that only some parts of the substrates could yield "hot spots," which exhibited extremely high spectral intensities even at relatively low concentrations of the analyte organic molecule. Owing to the synergistic effects of the hierarchically structured semiconductor nanocrystals and the metal NPs, the degree of increase in SERS was much higher than that in the case of Ag NPs alone. This could be ascribed to the high-intensity electromagnetic fields induced at the junction spots formed between the Ag NPs, the chemical enhancement properties of the ZnO NFs, and the ability of the 3D hierarchical nanostructures to create a large number of the adsorption sites and hot spots necessary for SERS.(C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.