Large scale preparation of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy substrates based on silver nanowires for trace chemical detection

Abstract

In this paper, a facile large-scale preparation of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates based on silver nanowires has been developed. The SERS substrates can be easily and precisely obtained by filtering bulky amounts of silver nanostructures through hydrophilic filter membranes one time. The developed membranes can be expanded to commercial wafer-style filter membranes of large size (>47 mm in diameter). The as-prepared SERS substrates presented good uniformity and good performance for the detection of crystal violet (CV) and 1,2-di(4-pyridyl)ethylene (BPE). The relative standard deviations (RSD) were less than 5.5% (n = 11) and 5.2% (n = 11) for CV and BPE, respectively. The logarithm of characteristic SERS intensity plotted against CV and BPE concentrations presented a linear relationship over the ranges from 1.0 × 10⁻⁴ to 1.0 × 10⁻⁸ mol L⁻¹ and from 5.0 × 10⁻⁴ to 5.0 × 10⁻⁹ mol L⁻¹, respectively. In the detection of natural water samples of river water, Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR) effluent and sewage disposal plant effluent, spiked with CV and BPE, the as-prepared SERS substrates also presented good performance, suggesting that such substrates possessed great potential in a broad range of analytical applications.