Facile synthesis of metal-phenolic-coated gold nanocuboids for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Metal-phenolic networks (MPNs) have been exploited to be a versatile coating film to fabricate core-shell structure due to their general adherent properties. Herein, gold nanocuboid (GNCB) wrapped by MPNs (GNCB at MPNs) are prepared by a facile encapsulation method for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) analysis. The MPN coating not only reshapes the electric field distribution around the nanostructures but also allows the substrate to adsorb more analytes, both of which contribute to the superior SERS activity of GNCB at MPNs. The SERS signals induced by plasmonic nanostructures increase four- to sixfold after MPN coating, reaching a maximum Raman enhancement factor calculated to be 9.47×10⁸. Moreover, the core-shell SERS substrate also demonstrates improved biocompatibility (∼fivefold increase) that facilitates the reliable SERS analysis of cancer cells and further diverse biomedical applications.