Issue 12, 2021

Self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles into 2D arrays at water–oil interfaces: rational construction of stable SERS substrates with accessible enhancing surfaces and tailored plasmonic response

Abstract

Self-assembly at water–oil interfaces has been shown to be a cheap, convenient and efficient route to obtain densely packed layers of plasmonic nanoparticles which have small interparticle distances. This creates highly plasmonically active materials that can be used to give strong SERS enhancement and whose structure means that they are well suited to creating the highly stable, reproducible and uniform substrates that are needed to allow routine and accurate quantitative SERS measurements. A variety of methods have been developed to induce nanoparticle self-assembly at water–oil interfaces, fine tune the surface chemistry and adjust the position of the nanoparticles at the interface but only some of these are compatible with eventual use in SERS, where it is important that target molecules can access the active surface unimpeded. Similarly, it is useful to transform liquid plasmonic arrays into easy-to-handle free-standing solid films but these can only be used as solid SERS substrates if the process leaves the surface nanoparticles exposed. Here, we review the progress made in these research areas and discuss how these developments may lead towards achieving rational construction of tailored SERS substrates for sensitive and quantitative SERS analysis.

Graphical abstract: Self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles into 2D arrays at water–oil interfaces: rational construction of stable SERS substrates with accessible enhancing surfaces and tailored plasmonic response

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
11 Des 2020
Accepted
16 Feb 2021
First published
16 Feb 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale, 2021,13, 5937-5953

Self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles into 2D arrays at water–oil interfaces: rational construction of stable SERS substrates with accessible enhancing surfaces and tailored plasmonic response

Z. Ye, C. Li, Q. Chen, Y. Xu and S. E. J. Bell, Nanoscale, 2021, 13, 5937 DOI: 10.1039/D0NR08803J

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, 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 commercial 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