Fabrication of hexagonally patterned flower-like silver particle arrays as surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates.

Hierarchical assembly of plasmonic nanostructures can induce high surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity. However, it is a challenge to uniformly disperse the hierarchical nanostructures onto a planar substrate to achieve SERS signal reproducibility. This report presents a facile route to fabricate a hexagonally patterned flower-like silver particle array as the SERS substrate. First, hexagonally ordered silver hemisphere arrays with smooth surface are molded in the pores of an anodic aluminum oxide template. Ag-nanosheets are then electrodeposited onto the surface of individual silver hemispheres. The numerous nano-edges and nano-gaps between adjacent nanosheets render a large number of hot spots, leading to high SERS activity over a larger area of chip. The silver flower-like array is employed as the SERS substrate, which is able to detect 0.1 nM rhodamine 6 G and 1 µM 3,3',4,4'-tetrachlorobiphenyl (PCB-77, a persistent organic pollutant).