Novel Fabrication of Au Nanoparticle Film on a Polyelectrolyte-coated Glass for Efficient Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering

In this paper, we report a novel method for the growth of gold nanoparticles on a polyelectrolyte-coated glass and its application as a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. Gold nanoparticles were readily grown on a polyelectrolyte-coated substrate using butylamine as the reductant of HAuCl4. The Au nanoparticles formed on the polyelectrolyte-coated substrate exhibited superior SERS activity compared to an electrochemically roughened Au substrate or a vacuum-evaporated Au film. In addition, our Au substrate shows excellent reproducibility and noticeable stability as an SERS substrate. The proposed strategy is simple, cost effective, and reproducible for the mass production of gold nanoparticles films, irrespective of the type of the underlying substrates, which therefore are useful in the development of plasmonics and SERS-based analytical devices.