Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1571218 | Materials Characterization | 2013 | 9 Pages |
•A simple method was developed to prepare dendritic and flower-like Ag nanostructures.•The flower-like Ag nanoparticles exhibit highest SERS activity.•The SERS substrate based on flower-like Ag particles can be used to detect melamine.
Silver nanostructures with dendritic, flower-like and irregular morphologies were controllably deposited on a silicon substrate in an aqueous hydrogen fluoride solution at room temperature. The morphology of the Ag nanostructures changed from dendritic to urchin-like, flowerlike and pinecone-like with increasing the concentration of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (MW = 55,000) from 2 to 10 mM. The Ag nanostructures were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray, and X-ray diffraction. Through a series of time-dependent morphological evolution studies, the growth processes of Ag nanostructures have been systematically investigated and the corresponding growth mechanisms have been discussed. In addition, the morphology-dependent surface-enhanced Raman scattering of as-synthesized Ag nanostructures were investigated. The results indicated that flower-like Ag nanostructure had the highest activity than the other Ag nanostructures for Rhodamine 6G probe molecules.
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