Self-assembled silver nanoislands formed on glass surface via out-diffusion for multiple usages in SERS applications.

We demonstrate that silver nanoisland film self-assembled on the surface of silver-containing glass in the course of thermal processing in hydrogen is capable to detect 10-7 M concentration of rhodamine 6G in water using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technique. The film can be multiply restored on the same glass substrate via annealing of the glass in hydrogen. We showed that the film can be self-assembled after as much as ten circles of the substrate cleaning followed by annealing. The proposed technique of the silver nanoisland film formation enables multiple usage of the same glass substrate in SERS experiments.