Concentric Ring Structures as Efficient SERS Substrates

Plasmonic nanopatterned structures that can work as highly efficient surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates are presented in this study. A "coupled" concentric ring structure has been designed, fabricated, tuned, and compared to an "etched" concentric ring structure and plain gold film via SERS experiments. The proposed design gives Raman signal intensity 630 times larger than plain gold film and 8 times larger than an "etched" concentric ring structure. The surface plasmons were imaged with the fluorescence imaging technique and supporting numerical simulations were done.