Qikui's paper has been accepted for publication in Rare Metals (IF 1.50). Congratulations! This paper was an invited contribution and will be included in a special issue of the journal.

Authors: Qi-Kui Fan, Ting-Zhuo Liu, Hou-Shen Li, Shu-Meng Zhang, Kai Liu, and Chuan-Bo Gao*

Title: Gold/oxide heterostructured nanoparticles for enhanced SERS sensitivity and reproducibility

Link to the Publisher: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12598-018-01199-7

Abstract: In surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), it is highly desirable to obtained Raman signals with high sensitivity and reproducibility from noble metal nanoparticle substrates, which remains a great challenge due to the inhomogeneity of the plasmonic coupling that is sensitive to the interparticle nanogaps. In this work, we report that the interparticle plasmonic coupling could be circumvented by first synthesizing Au/metal or non-metal oxide heterostructured nanoparticles and then depositing them uniformly onto the substrates, leading to high reproducibility of the Raman signals. Strong plasmonic coupling has been found at the Au/oxide interface, which enables high sensitivity of the SERS analysis that accompanies the excellent signal reproducibility. Among different oxides investigated (SiO2, TiO2, and Fe2O3), the Au/Fe2O3 heterostructured nanoparticles demonstrate the highest Raman enhancement effect. We believe our strategy opens a promising route to fabricating SERS substrates that are capable of sensitively and quantitatively detecting molecules of interest in a much reliable manner.