Semiconductor SERS enhancement enabled by oxygen incorporation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29222510.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-02166-z and PMC identifier 5722866.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Semiconductor-based surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates represent a new frontier in the field of SERS. However, the application of semiconductor materials as SERS substrates is still seriously impeded by their low SERS enhancement and inferior detection sensitivity, especially for non-metal-oxide semiconductor materials. Herein, we demonstrate a general oxygen incorporation-assisted strategy to magnify the semiconductor substrate-analyte molecule interaction, leading to significant increase in SERS enhancement for non-metal-oxide semiconductor materials. Oxygen incorporation in MoS<sub>2</sub> even with trace concentrations can not only increase enhancement factors by up to 100,000-fold compared with oxygen-unincorporated samples but also endow MoS<sub>2</sub> with low limit of detection below 10<sup>-7</sup> M. Intriguingly, combined with the findings in previous studies, our present results indicate that both oxygen incorporation and extraction processes can result in SERS enhancement, probably due to the enhanced charge-transfer resonance as well as exciton resonance arising from the judicious control of oxygen admission in semiconductor substrate.