Nano-textured metallic surfaces for optical sensing and detection applications

This work describes fabrication of three-dimensionally nano-textured silicon surface structures metalized by thin gold films, and their application for optical sensing and detection of solute molecules utilizing surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effect. Two types of sensitive surfaces were prepared by different techniques. The first of them was a checkerboard pattern of 3D nanoblocks defined in compact areas on the surface of a silicon wafer using highly accurate electron-beam lithography (EBL) technique, and fabricated by dry reactive-ion etching (RIE) technique with subsequent metalization of the surface by gold sputtering. The second type of sensitive surface consisted of a square array of nano-apertures, defined on a large area of the silicon surface by a less accurate but simpler ultraviolet holographic lithography, and subsequently fabricated in a sequence of dry and wet etching as well as gold sputtering steps. The fabricated structures were found to exhibit significant near-field enhancement, as evidenced by strong SERS signal from the sensors immersed in aqueous pyridine solutions with concentrations as low as 10−9 M due to the presence of well-defined 3D periodic texture of the structure.