Obliquely Deposited Titanium Nitride Nanorod Arrays as Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Substrates

In this work, titanium nitride (TiN) nanorod arrays were prepared as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates using glancing angle deposition (GLAD) in a magnetron sputtering system. The nitrogen flow rate was varied from R₂ = 1 to 3 sccm, yielding five TiN uniform thin films and five TiN nanorod arrays. The figure of merit (FOM) of each TiN uniform film was measured and compared with the SERS signal of each TiN nanorod array. Rhodamine 6G (R6G) was used as the analyte in SERS measurement. For an R6G concentration of 10^-6 M, the analytical enhancement factor (AEF) of the TiN nanorod array that was prepared at R₂ = 1.5 sccm was 10⁴. The time-durable SERS performance of TiN nanorod arrays was also investigated.