Laser nanostructuring of Au/Ag and Au/Ni films for application in SERS

In this paper results on laser nanostructuring of Au/Ag and Au/Ni thin films are presented. The nanostructuring leads to formation of arrays of bimetallic nanoparticles. The fabrication of the these structures is made using a two step procedure. Initially, thin films are deposited on quartz substrates by classical pulsed laser deposition method. In order to produce Au/Ag or Au/Ni thin films, targets with two sections consist the different metals are used. Thin films with different concentrations of the two metals are obtained by changing the area of the different sections in the target. The as prepared films are then annealed by nanosecond laser pulses delivered by Nd:YAG laser system operated at λ = 355 nm. It is found that the laser annealing may lead to nanostructuring of the deposited films as at certain conditions decomposition into monolayers of nanoparticles with narrow size distribution is obtained. The performed EDX analyses indicate that the fabricated particles are composed by a bimetallic system of the basic metals used. The transmission spectra of the obtained structures show evidences of plasmon excitations. The bimetal nanostructures are covered with Rhodamine 6G and then tested as active substrates for Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS).