Physical deposition improved SERS stability of morphology controlled periodic micro/nanostructured arrays based on colloidal templates.

An effective and inexpensive method is developed to fabricate periodic arrays by sacrificial colloidal monolayer template route by chemical deposition and further physical deposition. By a colloidal template induced precursor solution dipping strategy, different periodic arrays of semi-hollow sphere array, inverse opal with monolayer pore arrays and hole arrays are obtained under different conditions. After magnetron sputtering deposition, their morphologies are changed to novel micro/nanostructured arrays of honeycomb-shaped arrays, hollow cavity arrays, and regular network arrays due to multiple direction deposition of sputtering deposition and shadow effect. After coating a gold thin layer, these periodic micro/nanostructured arrays are used as SERS active substrates and demonstrate a very stable SERS performance compared with periodic arrays achieved by direct colloidal template-induced chemical deposition. Additionally, a honeycomb-shaped array displays better SERS enhancement than that of a hollow cavity array or a regular network array. After optimization of honeycomb-shaped arrays with different periodicities, an array with periodicity of 350 nm demonstrates much stronger SERS enhancement and possesses a low detection limit of 10(-11) M R6G. Such stable SERS performance is useful for practical application in portable Raman detecting devices to detect organic molecules.