Issue 43, 2015

Rational fabrication of a gold-coated AFM TERS tip by pulsed electrodeposition

Abstract

Reproducible fabrication of sharp gold- or silver-coated tips has become the bottleneck issue in tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, especially for atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based TERS. Herein, we developed a novel method based on pulsed electrodeposition to coat a thin gold layer over atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips to produce plasmonic TERS tips with high reproducibility. We systematically investigated the influence of the deposition potential and step time on the surface roughness and sharpness. This method allows the rational control of the radii of gold-coated TERS tips from a few to hundreds of nanometers, which allows us to systematically study the dependence of the TERS enhancement on the radius of the gold-coated AFM tip. The maximum TERS enhancement was achieved for the tip radius in the range of 60–75 nm in the gap mode. The coated gold layer has a strong adhesion with the silicon tip surface, which is highly stable in water, showing the great potential for application in the aqueous environment.

Graphical abstract: Rational fabrication of a gold-coated AFM TERS tip by pulsed electrodeposition

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Jun 2015
Accepted
01 Oct 2015
First published
08 Oct 2015

Nanoscale, 2015,7, 18225-18231

Author version available

Rational fabrication of a gold-coated AFM TERS tip by pulsed electrodeposition

L. Yang, T. Huang, Z. Zeng, M. Li, X. Wang, F. Yang and B. Ren, Nanoscale, 2015, 7, 18225 DOI: 10.1039/C5NR04263A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements