Templated nanoporous copper and nickel: Novel substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

This paper presents a new template method for the preparation of porous copper and nickel for use as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. By adopting templates composed of spherical nickel phosphate particles, nanoporous metallic films were obtained via electrodeposition. The SERS effect of the novel substrate was evaluated. The templated nanoporous copper and nickel substrates produced via an optimized process were found to be strongly and reproducibly SERS active using rhodamine B as probe molecules, mainly due to their characteristic morphology with hierarchically rough interconnected pores.