Rational fabrication of a gold-coated AFM TERS tip by pulsed electrodeposition

Reproducible fabrication of sharp gold- or silver-coated tips has become the bottleneck issue in tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, especially for atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based TERS. Herein, we developed a novel method based on pulsed electrodeposition to coat a thin gold layer over atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips to produce plasmonic TERS tips with high reproducibility. We systematically investigated the influence of the deposition potential and step time on the surface roughness and sharpness. This method allows the rational control of the radii of gold-coated TERS tips from a few to hundreds of nanometers, which allows us to systematically study the dependence of the TERS enhancement on the radius of the gold-coated AFM tip. The maximum TERS enhancement was achieved for the tip radius in the range of 60-75 nm in the gap mode. The coated gold layer has a strong adhesion with the silicon tip surface, which is highly stable in water, showing the great potential for application in the aqueous environment.