Magnetically assembled SERS substrates made of Fe-Ag nanoparticles obtained by laser ablation in ethanol

SCARAMUZZA, STEFANO; CORAL, DIEGO F.; BADOCCO, DENIS; FERNÁNDEZVANRAAP, MARCELA B.; PASTORE, PAOLO; AMENDOLA, VINCENZO

Chemphyschem

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH

Lugar: Weinheim; Año: 2016 vol. 17 p. 1 - 10

1439-4235

The widespread application of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) would benefit of simple and scalable self-assembly procedures for the realization of plasmonic arrays with high density of electromagnetic hot-spots. To this purpose, here we describe the exploitation of iron-doped silver nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by laser ablation of a bulk bimetallic Fe-Ag target immersed inethanol. The use of laser ablation in liquid was key to achieve in one step bimetallic NPs with clean surface available to functionalization with the desired thiolated molecules. These Fe-Ag NPs show SERS performances, ready response to external magnetic fields and complete flexibility in surface coating. All these characteristics were used for the magnetic assembly of plasmonic arrays whichserved as SERS substrates for the identification of molecules of analytical interest. The magnetic assembly of NPs allowed the 28-fold increase in the SERS signal of analytes compared to notassembled NPs. The versatility of substrate preparation and the SERS performances were investigated as a function of NPs surface coating among different thiolated ligands. These results show a simple procedure to obtain magnetically assembled regenerable plasmonic arrays forrepeated SERS investigation of different samples, and it can be of inspiration for the realization of other self-assembled and reconfigurable magnetic-plasmonic devices.