Controllable growth of silver nanostructures by a simple replacement reaction and their SERS studies

Hierarchical silver nanostructures, consisting of dendritic (symmetric branched) and fractal patterns (randomly ramified), were synthesized very easily by dropping a droplet of AgNO3-HF solution on silicon wafers. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and open circuit potential-time (Ocp-t) measurement demonstrated that the two nanostructures converted with the reaction composition. The structural evolution was tentatively explained with the theory that oriented growth was determined by the anisotropy of the solid–liquid interfacial energy and the oriented attachment-based aggregation mechanism. Results on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals of the silver films with hierarchical nanostructures demonstrate that SERS is sensitive to silver nanostructures.

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