Plasmonic "nano-fingers on nanowires" as SERS substrates

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate based on plasmonics-active metallic nano-finger arrays grown on arrays of triangular-shaped metal-coated silicon nanowire arrays is proposed. Finite-difference time-domain modeling is employed to numerically calculate the effect of the inter-finger gap and the growth angle of the nano-fingers on the magnitude of SERS enhancement and the plasmon resonance wavelength. Additionally, the polarization dependence of the SERS signals from these novel substrates has been studied. A protocol for the fabrication of the proposed SERS substrate is also discussed.