Self-assembled silver nanoparticles in glass microstructured by poling for SERS application

• Published in: Current applied physics 2019, 19(10), , pp.1088-1095
• Main Authors: Babich, Ekaterina S., Gangrskaia, Elizaveta S., Reduto, Igor V., Béal, Jérémie, Redkov, Alexey V., Maurer, Thomas, Lipovskii, Andrey A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Engineering Sciences; Glass; Micro and nanotechnologies; Microelectronics; Poling; Self-assembly; SERS; Silver nanoparticles; 물리학
• ISSN: 1567-1739; 1878-1675
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cap.2019.07.003

A simple technique to fabricate microchannels in glasses with self-assembled silver nanoparticles (NPs) in the channels is presented. It combines thermal-electric poling of silver-to-sodium ion-exchanged glass slides with a patterned anodic electrode, formation of the microchannels via selective etching off the unpoled slide regions, and hydrogen annealing. The annealing results in the growth of NPs only on the bottom of the channels. The studies performed allowed optimizing the channels’ depth and NPs surface density for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) based sensing and microfluidic applications. We have demonstrated that the formed NPs allow detection of 1/20 of BPE (1,2-Di(4-pyridyl)ethylene 97%) monolayer, the evaluated Raman enhancement factor being ~4·107. The proposed approach based on the glass poling allowed us the fabrication of ~1 μm deep channels and easy multiplication of the structures because the anodic electrodes used for the poling are capable of multiple usage. [Display omitted] •Chemical etching of a thermally poled glass allows formation of microchannels.•Diffusion of reduced silver from the glass forms nanoparticles in the channels.•The self-assembled nanoparticles in the channels enhance Raman signal up to 4·107.