Investigation of the performance of thermally generated gold nanoislands for LSPR and SERS applications

In this work, the performance of gold nanoislands was investigated for Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) and Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) applications. Nanoislands were generated by thermally annealing thin layers of gold (having thickness in the 6-12 nm range), which was previously deposited by vacuum thermal evaporation onto glass substrates. Gold nanoparticles (AuNP) were evaluated based on their plasmonic and SERS performance and morphological properties. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to measure the average particle size and average interparticle distance in order to correlate them with the obtained plasmonic/Raman capabilities. The technological parameters of nanoisland fabrication for optimal performances were also determined. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.