Surface enhanced Raman scattering arising from plasmonic interaction between silver nano-cubes and a silver grating

A high effective surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate is experimentally demonstrated, which is composed of silver nano-cubes on a silver grating. The control experiments show that the intensity of the Raman signals from this substrate is about 15.6 times as high as that from the recently proposed substrate composed of Ag nano-cubes on an Ag film. The mechanism of the better performance in SERS is discussed from the viewpoint of plasmonic interaction between the nano-cubes and the grating which can generate more hot-spots. The influence of the Ag NCs' concentration and detection ability of the substrate are also investigated. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4816739]