Fabrication of periodic microscale stripes of silver by laser interference induced forward transfer and their SERS properties

The micro-stripe structure was prepared by laser interference induced forward transfer technique, composed of Ag nano-particles (NPs). The effects of the film thickness with the carbon nano-particles mixed polyimide (CNPs@PI), Ag film thickness, and laser fluence were studied on the transferred micro-stripe structure. The periodic Ag micro-stripe with good resolution was obtained in a wide range of CNPs@PI film thickness from similar to 0.5 to similar to 1.0 mu m for the Ag thin film similar to 20 nm. The distribution of the Ag NPs composing the micro-stripe was compact. Nevertheless, the average size of the transferred Ag NPs was increased from similar to 41 to similar to 197 nm with the change of the Ag donor film from similar to 10 to similar to 40 nm. With the increase of the laser fluence from 102 to 306 mJ center dot cm(-2) per-beam, the transferred Ag NPs became aggregative, improving the resolution of the corresponding micro-stripe. Finally, the transferred Ag micro-stripe exhibited the significant surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) property for rhodamine B (RhB). While the concentration of the RhB reached 10(-10) mol center dot L-1, the Raman characteristic peaks of the RhB were still observed clearly at 622, 1359 and 1649 cm(-1). These results indicate that the transferred Ag micro-stripe has potential application as a SERS chip in drug and food detection.