A surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy sensing template consisting of gold-covered nanopillars is developed. The plasmonic slab consists of a perforated gold film at the base of the nanopillars and a Babinet complementary dot array on top of the pillars. The nanopillars were fabricated by the incorporation of an iron salt precursor into a self-assembled block copolymer thin film and subsequent reactive ion etching. The preparation is easy, scalable, and cost-effective. We report on the increase in surface-enhanced Raman scattering efficiency for smaller pillar heights and stronger coupling between the dot array and perforated gold film with average enhancement factors as high as 107. In addition, the block copolymer-derived templates show an excellent relative standard deviation of 8% in the measurement of the Raman intensity. Finite difference time domain simulations were performed to investigate the nature of the electromagnetic near-field enhancement and to identify plasmonic hot spots.
Keywords: 4-aminothiophenol; SERS uniformity; block copolymer lithography; finite difference time domain simulation; nanofabrication; plasmonic nanomaterials; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.