Fabrication of flower-like silver nanostructure on the Al substrate for surface enhanced fluorescence

Surface-enhanced fluorescence (SEF) substrates consisting of flower-like nanostructure of electromagnetically coupled silver dendrites on Al surface were manufactured by modified galvanic displacement process between Ag ion and Al at room temperature. Substrate enhancement efficiency, which was evaluated from SEF intensities of the adsorbed Rhodamine 6 G(Rh6G), was found to increase rapidly with reaction time. The observation highlights the importance of strong coupling effects between nanobranches in SEF. The variation of SEF efficiency can be qualitatively explained with local surface plasmon resonance model of coupled silver nanostructures. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3681420]