Reproducible Deep-UV SERRS on Aluminum Nanovoids

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with deep-UV excitation is of particular interest because a large variety of biomolecules such as amino acids exhibit electronic transitions in the UV spectral range and resonant excitation dramatically increases the cross section of the associated vibrational modes. Despite its potential, UV-SERS is still little-explored. We present a novel straightforward scalable route to fabricate aluminum nanovoids for reproducible SERS in the deep-UV without the need of expensive lithographic techniques. We adopt a modified template stripping method utilizing a soluble template and self-assembled polymer spheres to create nanopatterned aluminum films. We observe high surface enhancement of approximately 6 orders of magnitude, with excitation in the deep-UV (244 nm) on structures optimized for this wavelength. This work thus enables sensitive detection of organics and biomolecules, normally nonresonant at visible wavelengths, with deep-UV surface-enhanced resonant Raman scattering on reproducible and scalable substrates.