Generalized green synthesis of diverse LnF sub(3)-Ag hybrid architectures and their shape-dependent SERS performances

This paper reports the generalized green synthesis of a series of LnF sub(3)-Ag (Ln = Nd, Sm, Eu, Tb) hybrid architectures with tunable shape, surface features, and composition. These intriguing hybrid structures are formed through the uniform magnetron sputtering of silver (Ag) nanoparticles on LnF...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:RSC advances 2014-01, Vol.4 (18), p.9205-9212
Main Authors: Zhang, Maofeng, Zhao, Aiwu, Li, Da, Sun, Henghui, Wang, Dapeng, Guo, Hongyan, Gao, Qian, Gan, Zibao, Tao, Wenyu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Architecture
Mathematical analysis
Reproducibility
Silver
Spindles
Surface chemistry
Synthesis
Three dimensional
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Summary:This paper reports the generalized green synthesis of a series of LnF sub(3)-Ag (Ln = Nd, Sm, Eu, Tb) hybrid architectures with tunable shape, surface features, and composition. These intriguing hybrid structures are formed through the uniform magnetron sputtering of silver (Ag) nanoparticles on LnF sub(3) micro-supporters. The LnF sub(3)-Ag surfaces are corrugated with high-density and numerous Ag nanogaps (which can serve as Raman active 'hot spots', to amplify the Raman signal), providing the sound reliability and reproducibility of Raman detection. We find that the special spindle structure of TbF sub(3)-Ag particles display the highest Raman enhancement efficiency compared to disk-, pancake-, peanut-, and rice-like structures. These experimental observations are in good agreement with the theoretical calculation by using the three-dimensional finite difference time domain (3D-FDTD) method. It is found that the produced LnF sub(3)-Ag composites are robust and efficient SERS substrates for high sensitivity detection of molecular adsorbates. Raman results show that the limit of detection (LOD) for crystal violet (CV), p-aminothiophenol (PATP) and Rhodamine 6G (R6G) of the optimized TbF sub(3)-Ag spindles substrate are as low as 10 super(-11) M, 10 super(-10) M and 10 super(-14) M, respectively, which meets the requirements for ultratrace detection of analytes. In addition, the LnF sub(3)-Ag substrates are stable and can be produced with high reproducibility, which shows great potential applications for universal SERS substrates in practical SERS detection.
ISSN:2046-2069
DOI:10.1039/c3ra47350c