Catalytic degradation of dye molecules and in situ SERS monitoring by peroxidase-like Au/CuS composite.

In this paper, Au/CuS composites were fabricated by a two-step method based on a facile solvothermal approach combined with the in situ reduction. It was demonstrated that the Au/CuS composite not only exhibited excellent peroxidase-like catalytic activity in the oxidation of the typical peroxidases (o-phenylenediamine and diaminobenzidine), but also showed promising SERS performance with remarkable sensitivity and high reproducibility. Based on these properties, the bi-functional Au/CuS composite was employed both as a catalyst for degrading a pollutant (Rhodamine 6G) and a SERS substrate for real-time monitoring of the degradation process quantitatively.