Direct laser writing of curved SERS for light-guided enhancement

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Flexible SERS substrates, typically used on irregular surfaces, have unexplored optomechanical effects that could enhance performance. We developed a micromechanically bending structure, i.e. microbender, to study how bending affects SERS substrates’ performance. Optical simulations of nanopillar arrays on micro-curved surfaces showed a 25–134 % improvement in mean-field localization at the pillar tips for arrays with pillar diameters of 0.4–1 μm, pitches of 0.5–0.8 μm, and heights of 0.5–4.5 μm. Raman measurements showed that SERS intensity increases when in a curved state due to enhanced light scattering, guiding, and field localization. A curved array of 6 μm tall pillars (0.5 μm diameter, 1 μm spacing) produced Raman intensities similar to dense single-voxel arrays with shorter 0.8 μm pillars (0.2 μm diameter, 0.2 μm gaps) in the planar state. This finding suggests that low resolution fabrication technologies can produce curved SERS substrates with similar performance to high resolution planar SERS, offering an alternative to the current “smaller is better” trend through post-fabrication manipulation.

Original languageEnglish
Article number127130
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalTalanta
Volume283
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2025

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
European Union within the Horizon Europe Program, under the EIC Pathfinder Project \u201CVortexLC\u201D, Grant Agreement no. 101047029. This work was also supported in part by the Methusalem and Hercules foundations and the OZR of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Mehdi Feizpour reports financial support was provided by European Union EIC Project VortexLC. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding Information:
European Union within the Horizon Europe Program, under the EIC Pathfinder Project \u201CVortexLC\u201D, Grant Agreement no. 101047029. This work was also supported in part by the Methusalem and Hercules foundations and the OZR of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

  • SERSSurface-enhanced Raman spectroscopyMicrobenderCustomized SERS substrateLight-guiding SERS substrate2-Photon polymerization

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