Enhanced surface-enhanced Raman scattering performance by folding silver nanorods

Folding straight Ag nanorods into zig-zag structures could generate corners or bends that become potential hot spots for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Using a dynamic shadowing growth method, zig-zag silver nanorod arrays of different bending number N with a fixed total rod length are fabricated, and their SERS performance are measured and compared using the Raman probe Rhodamine 6G. The SERS intensity increases with N when N < 4 and decreases when N > 4. The results suggest that folding silver nanorods into three-dimensional structures is a promising way to design highly sensitive SERS substrates. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3694056]