Multiscale Patterned Plasmonic Arrays for Highly Sensitive and Uniform SERS Detection
Yi Chen, Haojing Yin, Debabrata Sikdar, Huang Liu, Qi Zhu, Gang Yao, Huan Qi, Ning Gu
Abstract
Abstract The ability to rationally manipulate plasmonic nanoparticles into well‐defined hierarchically patterned arrays is crucial for exploiting the property of novel optical metamaterials and is of significance for designing plasmonic devices. Before the benefits offered by hybridized plasmon modes may be fully utilized in practice, programmable plasmonic nanostructures with preset morphology and composition should be developed in advance. However, it remains a grand challenge to fabricate large‐area patterned array with highly ordered nanostructure in a low‐expertise and straightforward route. Here, high‐throughput fabrication of multiscale patterned plasmonic arrays of macroscopic surfaces and nanoscale ordering is reported. The bottom‐up ligand‐guided crystallization of nanoparticles takes place upon drying‐mediated self‐assembly at air/solution/substrate interfaces, while the macroscopic topography is regulated by rational control over local nucleation in microwrinkles. Using bimetallic nanobricks as meta‐atoms, it is demonstrated that the configuration of patterned arrays can be finely engineered as required by simply customizing the wrinkled template. It is also proved that the fabricated plasmonic arrays exhibit nearly uniform hot‐spot distribution across the entire surface, which makes them as practical substrates for the surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications. This facile yet efficient methodology suggests a versatile step toward the fabricating of hierarchically patterned architectures for practical device construction.