Investigation on surface-enhanced Raman scattering activity on an ex situ ORC roughened nickel electrode

Roughened nickel electrode surfaces have been demonstrated to exhibit a moderate enhanced Raman scattering effect with an enhancing factor of about 104, which is not suitable in some cases for further inhibition adsorbates study. We reported here a new modified roughening procedure of nickel electrodes, by which a high S/N ratio surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of pyridine was obtained. At least two major advantages were found for the modified roughening methods: (1) enhancing factor was improved by a factor of about 10, (2) SERS-active sites were distributed uniformly on the Ni surfaces. Potential-dependent SERS spectra of a candidate inhibitor molecule benzotriazole (BTAH) adsorbed onto nickel electrodes were briefly presented for verifying the feasibility of the modified roughening method in this paper. Results showed that BTAH molecules were adsorbed on the nickel electrodes in neutral molecule form at more negative potentials and a polymer-like film with the composition of [Ni-n(BTA)(p)](m) formed on the nickel electrodes with the positive shift of potentials. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.