Nano-morphology induced additional surface plasmon resonance enhancement of SERS sensitivity in Ag/GaN nanowall network

The GaN nanowall network, formed by opening the screw dislocations by kinetically controlled MBE growth, possesses a large surface and high conductivity. Sharp apexed nanowalls show higher surface electron concentration in the band-tail states, in comparison to blunt apexed nanowalls. Uncapped silver nanoparticles are vapor deposited on the blunt and sharp GaN nanowall networks to study the morphological dependence of band-edge plasmon-coupling. Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy studies performed with a rhodamine 6G analyte on these two configurations clearly show that the sharp nanowall morphology with smaller Ag nanoparticles shows higher enhancement of the Raman signal. A very large enhancement factor of 2.8 x 10(7) and a very low limit of detection of 10(-10) M is observed, which is attributed to the surface plasmon resonance owing to the high surface electron concentration on the GaN nanowall in addition to that of the Ag nanoparticles. The significantly higher sensitivity with same-sized Ag nanoparticles confirms the unconventional role of morphology-dependent surface charge carrier concentration of GaN nanowalls in the enhancement of Raman signals.