Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy on Silver-Nanoparticle-Coated Carbon-Nanotube Networks Fabricated by Electrophoretic Deposition

In this study, the efficiency of silver nanoparticle (AgNP) decorated carbon nanotube (CNT) based porous substrates has been investigated for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) applications. The fabrication of uniform thin coatings of carbon nanotubes is accomplished by Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) on organosilane functionalized silicon substrates. The deposition process exemplifies a fast, reproducible and single-step room temperature coating strategy to fabricate horizontally aligned porous CNT network. Surfactant stabilized AgNPs were deposited on the CNT networks by immersion coating. The acquired Raman spectra of Rhodamine6G (R6G) analyte examined on the fabricated Ag-CNT-Si substrates exhibited enhanced signal intensity values when compared to SERS-active planar AgNP-Si substrates. An overall enhancement factor of similar to 10(9) was achieved for the tested analyte which enables pushing the limit of detection to 1 x 10(-12)M (1 pM). The enhancement can be attributed to the large surface area offered by the AgNP-CNT porous network, which is expected to increase the number of effective "hot spots" for the SERS effect.