Transferable G/Au Film for Constructing a Variety of SERS Substrates

TL;DR

A transferable graphene/gold film is developed to create versatile SERS substrates with high sensitivity and compatibility for various detection applications.

Contribution

A novel transferable G/Au film is introduced for constructing multifunctional SERS substrates with high performance and adaptability.

Findings

The G/Au film achieved an enhancement factor of approximately 1.40 × 10⁵.

The film demonstrated high mechanical strength, large specific surface area, and good biocompatibility.

Transferring the film to Ag/Si and PDMS substrates improved sensitivity and enabled in situ detection.

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), as one of the most powerful analytical methods, undertakes important inspection tasks in various fields. Generally, the performance of an SERS-active substrate relies heavily on its structure, which makes it difficult to integrate multiple-functional detectability on the same substrate. To address this problem, here we designed and constructed a film of graphene/Au nanoparticles (G/Au film) through a simple method, which can be conveniently transferred to different substrates to form various composite SERS substrates subsequently. By means of the combination of the electromagnetic enhancement mechanism (EM) and the chemical enhancement mechanism (CM) of this structure, the film realized good SERS performance experimentally, with the enhancement factor (EF) approaching ca. 1.40 × 105. In addition, the G/Au film had high mechanical strength and had large specific surface area and good biocompatibility that is beneficial for Raman detection. By further transferring the film to an Ag/Si composite substrate and PDMS flexible film, it showed enhanced sensitivity and in situ detectability, respectively, indicating high compatibility and promising prospect in Raman detection.

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