Thermally generated Au–Ag nanostructures with tunable localized surface plasmon resonance as SERS activity substrates

Various Au–Ag bimetallic alloy nanostructures were obtained as sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates by changing the thermal annealing sequence. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results confirm that Au/Ag bimetallic clusters and Ag–Au core-shell like structures can be designed by thermal annealing. The absorption spectra showed that the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) frequency of the annealed Au/Ag bimetallic alloy structure could effectively shift from the near ultraviolet to the visible region. At the same time, the Au/Ag bimetallic alloy films modified by thermal annealing have shown satisfactory performance as SERS substrates. Raman enhancement mechanism of Au–Ag bimetallic alloy films is verified by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation results.