A high-throughput method for controlled hot-spot fabrication in SERS-active gold nanoparticle dimer arrays

We present a high-throughput method for fabricating large arrays of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active gold dimers. Using a large-area/low-cost nanopatterning method in conjunction with a meniscus force deposition technique, we were able to create large arrays of uniformly spaced nanoclusters comprising two 60-nm gold nanospheres. Raman measurements of a thiophenol monolayer deposited on smaller scale arrays of aligned dimers yielded enhancement factors as high as 10(9). Polarization-control led measurements show spectral peak heights to be 10-100 times smaller when the incident beam is polarized perpendicularly to the dimer axis, confirming that the measured enhancements arise from the 'hot spots' between the two nanospheres. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.