A double substrate sandwich structure for fiber surface enhanced Raman scattering detection

A double substrate sandwiching structure has been designed and tested for molecular detection using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). With silver (Ag) nanoparticles as SERS substrates and rhodamine 6G (R6G) as a test molecule, the results show that the sandwich configuration exhibits significantly higher SERS enhancement compared to just one of the substrates or a simple sum of the signals from the two separate substrates. The improved SERS sensitivity is attributed to a stronger electromagnetic field enhancement by the double substrate sandwich structure. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.