Immobilised Gold Nanostructures on Printing Paper for Lable-Free Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

In this research, paper-based SERS active substrates with different grade gram per square meter (GSM) were prepared by adsorbing 40 nm spherical GNP and 40nm star shaped gold nanostructures GNS. Besides the SERS evaluation and optimization, morphological parameters of the samples were found to strongly affect the enhancer properties of the substrates. The developed substrate was tested regarding surface homogeneity as well as by the Raman reporter dye Methylene Blue (MB). These paper-based SERS active substrates are simple to prepare, easy to handle and cheap solid SERS substrates. GNS with 135 GSM printing paper can be easily used as highly active SERS active substrates, with average enhancement factor EF= 105.