In situ fabrication of graphene nanowalls as active surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate

Graphene-wall (G-wall) nanostructure was directly grown on the surface of copper foil by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method, and then was employed as active G-wall surface-enhanced Raman scattering (GW-SERS) substrate. To investigate the SERS activity of this G-wall substrate, rhodamine 6G was used as a target molecule. And better Raman enhancement ability was observed, compared with the graphene film on the copper foil. Meanwhile, this novel G-wall based GW-SERS substrate not only maintained the high SERS activity, but also could be easily obtained in large scale. Moreover, the substrate could avoid the use of noble metals, self-assembled steps, complicated photolithograph treatments, as well as the graphene transferring processes. And the GW-SERS substrate could provide the high SERS activity and eliminate fluorescence background noise. Hence, this GW-SERS substrate could be potentially applied for detecting trace amount of analytes in future analytical detection fields.