Optimizing pyramidal silicon substrates through the electroless deposition of Ag nanoparticles for high-performance surface-enhanced Raman scattering

This work describes the direct fabrication of Ag nanoparticles on pyramidal silicon using a facile, one-step, electroless deposition process at room temperature with short reaction time (3 min). The resulting device could use for rapid drug detection based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SEAS). The size of the silicon pyramids controlled by altering the texturing time of the silicon substrate. Spin coating was used to enable the rapid deposition of rhodamine 6G molecules (3 min) on the Ag nanoparticles. The resulting pyramidal silicon decorated with Ag nanoparticles provides large specific area as well as hot spots to promote localized surface plasmon resonance, resulting in notable SEAS enhancement and a low 5-fluorouracil detection limit (10(-6) M).