Photoinduced kinetics of SERS in bioinorganic hybrid systems. a case study: dopamine-TiO2

The reported observation of SERS on semiconductors has confirmed the feasibility of distinguishing the charge-transfer mechanism from the electromagnetic one responsible for the enhancement of the signal in metal nanoparticles. Experimental investigation of the well characterized dopamine-TiO(2) system revealed an unexpected dependence on coverage and size. We propose here a theoretical model applicable to SERS on semiconducting substrates that explains this remarkable behavior. The model is based on a competition mechanism arising from the formation of an electron gas in the conduction band of the semiconductor due to the photoexcitation of a charge-transfer complex. Taking into account the two competing effects, a linear increase in the Raman intensity arising from increasing coverage and a quenching effect due to the photon absorption by the electron gas, provides excellent agreement between our model and the experiment for 5 nm nanoparticles. Discrepancies for the case of 2 nm nanoparticles are attributed to quantum confinement, an effect that is investigated elsewhere.