Layered double hydroxide nanosheets-built porous film-covered Au nanoarrays as enrichment and enhancement chips for efficient SERS detection of trace styrene.

Styrene, a prevalent volatile organic compounds (VOCs), is very harmful to atmosphere and humans. Consequently, the development of efficient detection technologies for styrene is of high importance, which is still in challenge! In this work, we crafted a layered double hydroxide (LDH) porous film-coated gold nanoarray, designed to act as a surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) chip for the efficient and portable detection of gaseous styrene. This chip features a covering layer composed of cross-linked LDH nanosheets, notable for their porous structure and high specific surface area. When the covering layer is 100–300 nm in thickness, this composite chip has significant enrichment effect and strong SERS performance to gaseous styrene with a lowest detectable concentration below 1 ppb (4.64 ×10-3 mg/m3), and can response within 10 s, showing the rapid response and high sensitivity. Additionally, the chip has strong anti-interference capabilities and maintains excellent response to styrene, even in mixed benzene-VOCs gases. The exceptional SERS performances of this chip is ascribed to its LDH covering layer-induced styrene-enrichment and structurally-enhanced SERS performances. This study provides a simple route and practical chip for the rapid and ultrasensitive SERS-based detection of gaseous styrene, which is also potentially beneficial for the detection of other gaseous VOCs. [Display omitted] • A layered double hydroxide (LDH) covered gold nanoarray is fabricated as SERS chip for trace styrene. • There exists an optimal thickness range (100–300 nm) of the LDH covering layer for this chip. • This chip can response to styrene molecules in < 10 s with a detection limit below 1 ppb. • This chip has good selectivity to styrene and strong anti-interference from other gaseous VOCs. • The superb SERS performance is attributed to the enrichment effect of the LDH covering to styrene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]