Ultrasensitive flower-like TiO2/Ag substrate for SERS detection of pigments and melamine

Weiye Yang; Quanhong Ou; Chenyan Li; Mingming Cheng; Weijun Li; Yingkai Liu

doi:10.1039/d1ra08128d

Ultrasensitive flower-like TiO₂/Ag substrate for SERS detection of pigments and melamine

RSC Adv. 2022 Mar 2;12(12):6958-6965. doi: 10.1039/d1ra08128d. eCollection 2022 Mar 1.

Authors

Weiye Yang^{1

2

3}, Quanhong Ou^{1

2

3}, Chenyan Li^{1

2

3}, Mingming Cheng^{1

2

3}, Weijun Li^{1

2

3}, Yingkai Liu^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Yunnan Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronic Information Technology, Yunnan Normal University Kunming 650500 China.
² College of Physics and Electronic Information, Yunnan Normal University Kunming 650500 China.
³ Key Laboratory of Advanced Technique & Preparation for Renewable Energy Materials, Ministry of Education, Yunnan Normal University Kunming 650500 China liuyingkai99@163.com.

Abstract

TiO₂ flower like nanomaterials (FLNMs) are fabricated via a hydrothermal method and Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are deposited via electron beam evaporation. Several biological pigments (CV, R6G and RhB) are selected as target molecules to investigate their surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) property. The results demonstrate ultrasensitivity and high reproducibility. They reveal that the limit of detection (LOD) is 4.17 × 10^-16 M and the enhancement factor (EF) is 2.87 × 10¹⁰ for CV, and the LOD is 5.01 × 10^-16 M and 7.94 × 10^-14 M for R6G and RhB, respectively. To assess the reproducibility on TiO₂/Ag FLNMs SERS substrates, they are tested with 1.0 × 10^-13 M of CV, 1.0 × 10^-13 M of R6G and 1.0 × 10^-11 M of RhB, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSD) are less than 12.93%, 13.52% and 11.74% for CV, R6G and RhB, respectively. In addition, we carry out melamine detection and the LOD is up to 7.41 × 10^-10 M, which is over 1000 times lower than the severest standards in the world. Therefore, the obtained TiO₂ FLNMs have potential application in detecting illegal food additives.