Analysis of hydrazine on a Cu surface with nanoscale resolution using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy

This paper described characterization of hydrazine adsorption on Cu surface with high-selectivity of component at right angle down to single molecular level using a plasmonic antenna enhancing Raman scattering. The antenna deposited by Cu with concentric pattern was designed by Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) calculation to enhance the electric field by focusing surface plasmon. By using this antenna, Raman peaks of adsorbed hydrazine on Cu was provided at 385 cm−1. Furthermore, these peaks were only observed at 1–2 nm from the antenna surface which meant that this approach had a potential to define the structure of adsorbed hydrazine just only on the plasmon antenna. The structure of adsorbed hydrazine was gauche-conformation. This data corresponded to the Density Functional Theory (DFT) of adsorption model of hydrazine on fcc-Cu (1 1 1) surface. These results suggest that this method creates a wide range of spin-off effects to the characterization of solid–liquid interface.