One-pot synthesis of gold nanodimers and their use as surface-enhanced Raman scattering tags†
Abstract
A simple one-pot method to synthesize, with reasonably high yields, gold nanodimers consisting of 40 nm-diameter nanospheres is described. Colocalized Rayleigh and surface-enhanced Raman scattering measurements on individual dimers suggest a relatively narrow distribution of interparticle gaps and demonstrate enhancement factors as high as ∼1.8 × 107 at the hot-spot level.