Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
A plasma oxidation-reduction process has been found to be suitable to produce silver surfaces showing Surface Enhanced Raman (SER) activity. SER spectra of monodisperse polystyrene films and of other smaller molecules like alkanethiole, have been obtained in order to study the correlation between enhancement and nanomorphology as probed by Atomic Force Microscopy. It was found that the enhancement is strongly correlated with a coalescence of the initially present silver grains (10–50 nm in size). This coalescence leads to the formation of 100–300 nm silver hills in which each silver grain is still clearly distinguishable. The increase of the effective surface area due to the particle coalescence has been correlated to the SERS enhancement in straightforward fashion while self assembled alkanethiole monolayers have been used as spacer for electromagnetic SERS enhancement of polystyrene.