SERS Substrate Using Ag@ZnO Composite Coated on Electrospun Cellulose Acetate Fibers by Sputtering Deposition under Limited Adatom Mobility

The present straightforward fabrication methodology of plasmonic substrates is based on Ag@ZnO nanocomposites deposited on cellulose acetate fibers. Magnetron sputtering combined with electrospinning allowed for different morphologies of ZnO and Ag at the nano and microscale. We examined the morphology and structural properties of the substrates by electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The results show that ZnO nanocolumns on the cellulose acetate fibers and Ag nanoparticles with various sizes and shapes can form on the ZnO surface. Also, we demonstrated the potential of substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications by using benzenethiol and rhodamine 6G as probe molecules. Our results showed that the experimental substrates exhibited good SERS performance and reproducibility. Our method is simple, versatile, and scalable and could be applied to other metal/oxide systems for plasmonic applications.