Fabrication of a Au nanoporous film by self-organization of networked ultrathin nanowires and its application as a surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate for single-molecule detection.

Due to its demonstrated usefulness in fields such as trace analysis, biodiagnosis, and in vivo study, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has received renewed interest in recent years. Development of SERS substrates is of great importance as the SERS intensity and reproducibility depend strongly on the SERS substrates. In this paper we report the fabrication of Au nanoporous film (NPFs) by self-organization of networked ultrathin Au nanowires for use as SERS substrates. The acquired Au NPFs display controllable thickness, low relative density, and considerable specific surface area. Furthermore, this self-organization of nanowires not only provides abundant junctions between nanowires, 5-20 nm nanopores, and three-dimensional nanowells, but also makes nanopores/nanogaps down to 1-2 nm. These nanoscale characteristics result in a high spatial density of hotspots with Raman enhancement factors up to 10(9). Combined with the uniformity and high purity, our Au NPF provides high-quality substrates for SERS sensing.