Noble metal-comparable SERS enhancement from semiconducting metal oxides by making oxygen vacancies

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) represents a very powerful tool for the identification of molecular species, but unfortunately it has been essentially restricted to noble metal supports (Au, Ag and Cu). While the application of semiconductor materials as SERS substrate would enormously widen the range of uses for this technique, the detection sensitivity has been much inferior and the achievable SERS enhancement was rather limited, thereby greatly limiting the practical applications. Here we report the employment of non-stoichiometric tungsten oxide nanostructure, sea urchin-like W(18)O(49) nanowire, as the substrate material, to magnify the substrate–analyte molecule interaction, leading to significant magnifications in Raman spectroscopic signature. The enrichment of surface oxygen vacancy could bring additional enhancements. The detection limit concentration was as low as 10(−7) M and the maximum enhancement factor was 3.4 × 10(5), in the rank of the highest sensitivity, to our best knowledge, among semiconducting materials, even comparable to noble metals without ‘hot spots'.