TY - JOUR U1 - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed) A1 - Mukherjee, Ashutosh A1 - Liu, Quan A1 - Wackenhut, Frank A1 - Dai, Fang A1 - Fleischer, Monika A1 - Adam, Pierre-Michel A1 - Meixner, Alfred A1 - Brecht, Marc T1 - Gradient SERS substrates with multiple resonances for analyte screening: fabrication and SERS applications JF - Molecules N2 - Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) provides a strong enhancement to an inherently weak Raman signal, which strongly depends on the material, design, and fabrication of the substrate. Here, we present a facile method of fabricating a non-uniform SERS substrate based on an annealed thin gold (Au) film that offers multiple resonances and gap sizes within the same sample. It is not only chemically stable, but also shows reproducible trends in terms of geometry and plasmonic response. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveals particle-like and island-like morphology with different gap sizes at different lateral positions of the substrate. Extinction spectra show that the plasmonic resonance of the nanoparticles/metal islands can be continuously tuned across the substrate. We observed that for the analytes 1,2-bis(4-pyridyl) ethylene (BPE) and methylene blue (MB), the maximum SERS enhancement is achieved at different lateral positions, and the shape of the extinction spectra allows for the correlation of SERS enhancement with surface morphology. Such non-uniform SERS substrates with multiple nanoparticle sizes, shapes, and interparticle distances can be used for fast screening of analytes due to the lateral variation of the resonances within the same sample. KW - island film KW - multiple plasmonic resonances KW - SERS substrates KW - surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) Y1 - 2022 UN - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-38881 SN - 1420-3049 SS - 1420-3049 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27165097 DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27165097 VL - 27 IS - 16 SP - 13 S1 - 13 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER -