Silver-based surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate fabrication using nanolithography and site selective electroless deposition

In this work active SERS (surface enhanced Raman scattering) substrates are obtained by electron beam lithography and site selective electroless deposition technique. The combination of these two techniques allows to obtain well-defined metal structures, with a considerable advantage in Raman signal enhancement and in device reproducibility. The active-substrates are composed of silver, gold or a combination of the two metals, with different nanoparticles characteristics, obtained by varying metal deposition time. Rhodamine 6G was used as probe molecules for SERS experiments, showing that this new active substrate has high sensitivity to SERS response and allows to give Raman scattering also for diluted solutions (10(-20) M). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.