Bacteria-template synthesized silver microspheres with hollow and porous structures as excellent SERS substrate

Abstract

Template-driven strategy is widely explored for the synthesis of nano/micro materials. Of all the templates studied, naturally occurring biological systems such as proteins, viruses and bacteria have attracted more attention due to the prolific sources and complex structural diversities. Herein, we report a simple bacteria templated synthesis of silver microspheres over a bottom-up controlled route. These as-prepared silver microspheres not only have narrow size distribution but possess hollow and porous structures. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) experiments using 2-mercaptopyridine (2-Mpy) as probing molecules show that these hollow porous microspheres can act as excellent substrate for ultrasensitive detecting. The detection limit is as low as 10⁻¹⁵ M and the enhancement factor reaches to 10¹¹. Compared with other conventional SERS substrates, the reproducible, high sensitive and cost-effective Ag microspheres could become an ideal substrate choice for practical SERS application.