Benchtop Fabricated Nano-Roughened Microstructured Electrodes for Electrochemical and Surface-Enhanced Raman...

Tailoring a material's surface with hierarchical structures from the micro- to the nanoscale is key for fabricating highly sensitive detection platforms. To achieve this, the fabrication method should be simple, inexpensive, and yield materials with a high density of surface features. Here, using benchtop fabrication techniques, gold surfaces with hierarchically structured roughness are generated for sensing applications. Hierarchical gold electrodes are prepared on pre-stressed polystyrene substrates via electroless deposition and amperometric pulsing. Electrodes fabricated using 1 mm H[AuCl₄] and roughened with 80 pulses revealed the highest electroactive surface area. These electrodes are used for enzyme-free detection of glucose in the presence of bovine serum albumin and achieved a limit of detection of 0.36 mm, below glucose concentrations in human blood. The surfaces nanoroughened with 100 pulses also showed excellent surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) response for the detection of rhodamine 6G, with an enhancement factor of ≈2 × 10⁶ compared to detection in solution, and for the detection of a self-assembled monolayer of thiophenol, with an enhancement factor of ≈30 compared to the response from microstructured gold surfaces. It is envisioned that the simplicity and low fabrication cost of these gold-roughened structures will expedite the development of electrochemical and SERS sensing devices.