Abstract
In order to investigate the interaction of organic molecules with metals by means of Raman spectroscopy, special substrates were designed which combine interference and surface-enhancement mechanisms. Triangular shaped silver nanostructures with an angle bisector and a height of about 80 nm were prepared by nanosphere lithography on silicon substrates with a 100-nm oxide layer. Utilizing these substrates the dependence of the Raman signal intensity on the thickness of copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) was studied in the range from few percentages of a monolayer coverage up to 80 nm using an in situ setup. At an excitation in resonance with the plasmons of the nanostructures (2.6 eV) an increase of the signal was observed during film growth. Contrary to that, excitation at 1.92 eV in resonance with the CuPc absorption band leads to a strongly enhanced Raman signal for submonolayer coverage which hardly changes with the CuPc film thickness in the ultra-low coverage regime.
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Acknowledgments
The authors like to thank Prof. M. Albrecht and C. Brombacher for the support with nanosphere lithography, P. Matthes for Ag evaporation and T. Jagemann for SEM images. Thanks belong to the International Research Trainig Group of Advanced Materials, Interconnects and Nanostructures for financing this study.
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Ludemann, M., Brumboiu, I.E., Gordan, O.D. et al. Surface-enhanced Raman effect in ultra-thin CuPc films employing periodic silver nanostructures. J Nanopart Res 13, 5855–5861 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-011-0564-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-011-0564-z