Fabrication of highly homogeneous surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates using Ag ion implantation

In recent times, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has attracted attention for its excellent potential application in chemical and biological detection. In this work, we demonstrate that a highly homogeneous SERS substrate can be realized by Ag ion implantation and the subsequent annealing process. Both the implantation and annealing parameters have been optimized for a high sensitivity SERS substrate. The SERS measurement indicates that a sample implanted by 20 kV Ag ions with a dosage of 3 x 10(16) ions cm(-2) exhibits the highest SERS activity. In addition, the SERS activity of the Ag-implanted substrates depends highly on the annealing temperature and time. Since none of the fabrication processes contain chemical reactions, our substrate is a clean system without any chemical residues.