Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful technique for achieving label-free, in-situ molecule detection with high sensitivity. In SERS, the Raman scattering of molecules is amplified several orders of magnitude through an enhanced electric field generated by the localized surface plasmonic resonance at metal surfaces. The metallic plasmonic structure for SERS in the VIS/near-IR region has been extensively investigated, while there is a high overlap between the detection region and the fluorescence region of probing molecules. Extending the SERS measurement to the deep-UV region has attracted lots of interest due to the possibility of measuring the Raman scattering free of fluorescence contribution. [1] Furthermore, the occurrence of resonance between incident photon energy and the electronic transition of the molecule in the deep-UV region will contribute to the enhancement of the Raman signal, known as the Resonance Raman effect. [2] Combining SERS with the resonance Raman effect, Surface-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy (SERRS) has been proven to achieve the enhancement of the Raman signal as large as 10⁸. [3] However, designing the plasmonic structure for deep-UV SERRS raises the challenge of precisely controlling the size of the metallic plasmonic structure at the sub-10-nm level. Consequently, most plasmonic nanostructures reported for UV SERRS were fabricated using high-cost technologies such as lithography and/or fabricated using complex processes.

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