Surface enhanced spectroscopy with gold nanostructures on silicon and glass substrates

Abstract : We compared the surface enhanced spectroscopy signal arising from dye molecules (methylene blue, crystal violet and octadecylrhodamine B) deposited on gold nanostructures fabricated onto two kinds of substrates: silicon wafer or glass. For any molecule and excitation wavelength, the observed signal was always higher on glass compared to silicon. This experimental result is confirmed by Finite-Difference Time Domain calculations: the enhancement in the electric field is much higher with gold nanoparticles on glass than on silicon, even if a thin oxide layer is present. These results clearly demonstrate that the nature of the substrate, independently of metallic nanoparticles, is important for the preparation of highly efficient SERS nanostructures.