Copper Oxide Nanostructures as Decorators for Feasible SERS Platforms

The aim of this paper was to build a sensitive 3D based SERS platform based on copper oxide nanostructures decorated black Si support. We synthesized two types of copper oxide nanostructures - spheres and cubes, which were further analyzed from morphological point of view. Showing an improved stability, Cu<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf>O based nanocubes were chosen to decorate bSi nanocones, and the prepared hybrid nano-architecture was tested against crystal violet. It was calculated an enhancement factor of 9.35×10<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">9</sup>, and we were able to reach a concentration of crystal violet up to 10<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−10</sup> M. These results are showing competitive Raman enhancement compared with noble metallic nanoparticles, while the prepared nano-assembly may be taken into consideration as a feasible three-dimensional SERS platform against different analytes.