A facile self-deposition of Ag nanosheets on silicon substrates for high-performance SERS sensing

This paper reports on a facile low-cost electroless deposition method with a short reaction time to directly fabricate Ag nanosheets onto a silicon substrate. Silver nitrate, hydrofluoric acid, and trisodium citrate were used as a silver source, etchant, and capping reagent by a wet chemical approach. The surface morphology of the Ag nanostructures could be controlled by adjusting the difference of reaction conditions (such as concentrations of hydrofluoric acid and trisodium citrate, reaction time). Ag nanosheets provide high corners, anisotropy, and hot spots for enhancing localized surface plasmon resonance with higher surface-enhanced Raman scattering enhancement and lower detection limits, which shall be beneficial in SERS-based chemical sensing.