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Synthesis of tin oxide-coated gold nanostars and evaluation of their surface-enhanced Raman scattering activities

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Abstract

Tin oxide-coated gold nanostar hybrid nanostructures are prepared by first synthesizing gold nanostars (ca. 400 nm), then introducing Na2SnO3 precursor followed by its hydrolysis and formation of a tin oxide layer on nanoparticle surface. The synthesized hybrid structures have been characterized by combination of UV–Vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray studies, scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The TEM and SEM analyses showed that gold nanostars have a coating with an approximate thickness of 15 nm. The tin (IV) oxide coating on the gold nanostars was identified by XRD and XPS analyses and confirmed by FTIR spectroscopy. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy was performed on tin oxide-coated and uncoated gold nanostars with crystal violet as a probe molecule. The SERS studies revealed field enhancement properties of Au nanostars, thus their strong SERS activity remained after tin oxide coating.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Prof. Aysen Yilmaz for access to XRD instrument in METU Department of Chemistry and Prof. Ahmet Oral for access to Raman spectrometer and light microscope in METU Department of Physics. We also acknowledge the support from METU-BAP Project: BAP-07-02-2014-007-684.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Aylin Elci & Emren Nalbant Esenturk

  2. Micro and Nanotechnology Program, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Ozge Demirtas, Alpan Bek & Emren Nalbant Esenturk

  3. Department of Physics, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Ibrahim Murat Ozturk & Alpan Bek

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  1. Aylin Elci
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  2. Ozge Demirtas
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Correspondence to Emren Nalbant Esenturk.

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Elci, A., Demirtas, O., Ozturk, I.M. et al. Synthesis of tin oxide-coated gold nanostars and evaluation of their surface-enhanced Raman scattering activities. J Mater Sci 53, 16345–16356 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2792-4

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