Inner wall coated hollow core waveguide sensor based on double substrate surface enhanced Raman scattering

A hollow core waveguide with silver nanoparticles coated on the inner wall has been used for molecular detection based on surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). With rhodamine 6G as an analyte molecule and two types of silver nanoparticles as double SERS substrates, the inner wall coated hollow core waveguide (IWCHCW) exhibits higher sensitivity than previous sampling methods with only one substrate. The improvement of sensitivity is attributed to the additional enhancement of the electromagnetic field by double substrate sandwich structure. The simple architecture and high sensitivity of IWCHCW make it promising for molecular detection in various analytical and sensing applications. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3000014]