Self-organized Polymer Wrinkles: A Lithography-free Pathway for Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Substrates

Self-organized pattern formation is a phenomenon that can be used for nanoscale pattering of large surface areas in a cost-effective manner. We exploit the phenomenon and fabricate sub-micron polystyrene wrinkle structures and demonstrate that after being coated with silver, they can be used as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates. We show that the signal enhancement generated by the wrinkles is 8 times higher in comparison to a flat reference while the measurement repeatability is simultaneously improved (variation reduced from 30 to 13%). The results indicate that self-organization could be further utilized in cost-effective, large-scale production of SERS substrates.