Designing, fabricating, and imaging Raman hot spots.

We have developed a probe of the electromagnetic mechanism of surface-enhanced Raman scattering via Au nanodisk arrays generated by using on-wire lithography. In this approach, disk thickness and interparticle gap are precisely controlled from 5 nm to many micrometers. Confocal Raman microscopy demonstrates that disk thickness and gap play a crucial role in determining surface-enhanced Raman scattering intensities. Theoretical calculations also demonstrate that these results are consistent with the electromagnetic mechanism, including the surprising result that the largest enhancement does not occur for the smallest gaps.