Fabrication of a highly sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate for monitoring the catalytic degradation of organic pollutants

In this paper, we demonstrate a simple and reliable two-step strategy based on an electrospinning technique combined with in situ calcination for the fabrication of ZnO nanofibers deposited on a silver foil surface. These nanofibers are used as a novel sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. The strong interactions between ZnO nanofibers and silver foil afford continuous delocalized surface plasmons, resulting in localization of the electric field at the gap between the ZnO nanofibers and silver foil; thus, the exciton-plasmon interactions between ZnO nanofibers and the silver foil surface contribute to the enhanced scattering, generating a large electromagnetic field enhancement. In addition, the ZnO nanofibers deposited on the silver foil surface exhibit enhanced photocatalytic activity toward the degradation of organic pollutants because of the charge separation effect and increase in the lifetime of the photogenerated excitons under ultraviolet light irradiation; thus, this new substrate can be used as a SERS substrate for determining the catalytic activity and reaction kinetics during the photodegradation of organic pollutants.