Role of O2 in inducing intensive fluctuations of surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectra

Confocal Raman microscopic measurements were performed on silver electrodes covered with hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H). When short accumulation time was used, the subsequently measured surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra exhibited fluctuations. As previously reported for other systems, the intensity of fluctuations of SERS spectra significantly decreases if O2 was removed from the ambient medium. In this contribution we show that intensive SERS fluctuations can be also observed for a-C:H/Ag samples immersed in the deoxygenated electrolyte after applying a negative potential pulse to the silver electrode. It means that the O2-mediated Burstein mechanism of SERS fluctuations, which has been previously proposed to explain the SERS O2 effect, is not adequate for these results. We suggest that oxygen chemisorbed on the silver surface decreases the average strength of the interaction between a-C:H clusters and the metal surface (and hence the speed of movement of a-C:H clusters across the metal surface) and that the SERS O2 effect should be rather explained using the "classical" model of SERS fluctuations, in which fluctuations are interpreted as a result of the thermally activated diffusion of carbon segments in and out of the SERS "hot spots". A numerical algorithm for modeling of the fluctuations of SERS intensity has been proposed, and some example simulations of SERS fluctuations have been carried out. For the first time, strongly fluctuating bands due to the stretching vibrations of significantly weakened C-H bonds have been identified.