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Optimized field confinement and plasmon-induced SERS activity of Janus-like Au–AgAuS hybrid nanoboats

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Abstract

Janus-like Au–AgAuS hybrid nanoboats (NBs) with controllable half shells were prepared by using seed-mediated growth method. Their tunable plasmon properties were investigated by using UV-Vis spectra and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. With the shell thicknesses increasing, the red shifting of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peaks and an obvious enhancement of transverse SPR band have been observed for the Janus-like NBs. The effects of shell thicknesses and covered areas on local electric field of Janus-like Au–AgAuS NBs were further studied by FDTD simulation, which proposed an effective method to manipulate the electromagnetic field distributions of metal plasmonic nanostructures. In addition, served as solution-based active SERS substrates, the SERS performances of Au NRs and Janus-like Au–AgAuS NBs with different shell thicknesses have been further estimated by using rhodamine B as probe molecules. Compared with the others, Au–AgAuS NBs with about 2.82-nm shell displayed the best SERS performance with good reproducibility in our experiments, owing to the effective plasmonic enhancement and load capability.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Weichang Zhou and Yi Ji for the helpful discussions and SERS tests of samples.

Availability of data and material

All data are presented in the main paper or in additional supporting files. They are fully available without restriction. Additional files including: Fig. S1 Shell thickness distributions of Au–AgAuS NBs with different addition amount of reaction precursors. Fig. S2 The corresponding absorption spectra of Au–Ag NRs in growing processes. Fig. S3 The normal Raman spectrum of 10−2 M pure RhB solution. Table S1 Experimental (Exp.) and Literature (Lit.) SERS shifts of RhB molecules detected by using as-prepared Au NRs and Au–AgAuS NBs with 2.82-nm shell as substrates. Table S2 The EF value calculated for Au NRs, Au–AgAuS NBs with 2.82-nm, 4.25-nm, 7.45-nm, and 10.34-nm shells in our experiments.

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11504105) and Undergraduate Student Innovation Experiment Project of Hunan Province (Grant No. 201510542002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China

    Ling Tang, Guo Jiang, Yun-Gui He, Wen-Jing Zhang, Zong-Can Li, Shan Liang & Xionggui Tang

  2. Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, 410004, China

    Jian-Bo Li

  3. School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, 221116, China

    Min Li

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  1. Ling Tang
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Contributions

LT had performed the experimental works and wrote this manuscript. GJ, YGH, WJZ, and ZCL did structural characterization of samples. SL designed the experiments and modified the manuscript. JBL, ML and XT helped in data analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shan Liang.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Tang, L., Jiang, G., He, YG. et al. Optimized field confinement and plasmon-induced SERS activity of Janus-like Au–AgAuS hybrid nanoboats. J Nanopart Res 20, 269 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-018-4371-7

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