Thiol-modified gold-coated glass as an efficient hydrophobic substrate for drop coating deposition Raman (DCDR) technique

In this paper we report an easy and low-cost way to prepare a hydrophobic substrate for drop coating deposition Raman (DCDR) spectroscopy. This substrate is formed by a thiol-modified Au-coated glass and provides the Raman spectra with the same quality as the commercial Teflon-coated stainless steel substrate (SpectRIM (TM),Tienta Sciences, Inc.) for model molecular systems - albumin solution and liposome suspension. Gold layer, similarly to polished steel in the commercial substrate, served as a highly refractive layer strongly increasing the Raman signal. The main advantage of introduced substrate is that it is simple and a low-cost preparation easily manageable in every standard laboratory. Thus, it represents a promising alternative to commercial Tefloncoated stainless steel substrate. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.