Plasmonic Nanostructures-Decorated ZIF-8-Derived Nanoporous Carbon for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering

[Image: see text] Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is considered to be a highly sensitive platform for chemical and biological sensing. Recently, owing to their high porosity and large surface area, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted considerable attention in sensing applications. Porous carbon nanostructures are promising SERS substrates due to their strong broadband charge-transfer resonance and reproducible fabrication. Furthermore, an extraordinarily large enhancement of the electromagnetic field enables plasmonic nanomaterials to be ideal SERS substrates. Here, we demonstrate the porous Au@Ag nanostructure-decorated MOF-derived nanoporous carbon (NPC) for highly efficient SERS sensing. Specifically, this plasmonic nanomaterial–NPC composite offers high Raman signal enhancement with the ability to detect the model Raman reporter 2-naphthalenethiol (2-NT) at picomolar concentration levels.