Trace determination of thiram using SERS-active hollow sea-urchin gold nanoparticles

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is greatly structure-dependent on the absorbed nanoparticles. Nanostructures with different novel morphologies show different Raman enhancement factor orders of magnitude. Herein, a unique nanostructure with fruitful SERS-active sites, composed of hollow interiors and thorns which named as hollow sea-urchin gold nanoparticles (HSU-GNPs), was synthesized by using a one-pot galvanic replacement method. And the corresponding morphologies and optical properties were characterized by TEM images and absorption spectra. Importantly, the synthetic parameters of HSU-GNPs were optimized to obtain a superior SERS performance by analyzing the formation mechanism and the SERS spectra of R6Glabeled HSU-GNPs which obtained at different concentrations of AgNO3. Furthermore, the SERS-based application of HSU-GNPs was performed on the doseresponse detection of thiram. The experimental result shows this detection strategy is available for thiram with decent sensitivity and reproducibility, which suggests that it is an excellent candidate for the detection of pesticides.