Xinyu's recent work on holey Au-Ag alloy nanoplates for SERS applications has been published by Nanoscale. Congratulations!

Title: Holey Au-Ag alloy nanoplates with built-in hotspots for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Authors: Xinyu Wei, Qikui Fan, Hongpo Liu, Yaocai Bai, Lei Zhang, Haoquan Zheng, Yadong Yin, and Chuanbo Gao*

Link to the publisher: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2016/nr/c6nr04866h

Abstract: Plasmonic noble metal nanocrystals with interior nanogaps have attracted great attention in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications due to the presence of built-in hotspots. Herein, we report a synthesis route to holey Au-Ag alloy nanoplates by controlled galvanic replacement with Ag nanoplates as the sacrificial template, a sulfite-coordinated Au(I) salt as the Au source, and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the capping agent. PVP helps regulate the anisotropic growth of nanopores on the Ag nanoplates to afford a highly holey nanostructure, and the monovalent Au(I) salt plays a critical role in stabilizing these holey nanoplates by rapidly enriching Au in the alloy nanostructures. Numerical simulations and experimental results suggest that these holey Au-Ag alloy nanoplates possess enormous internal hotspots for high sensitivity in the SERS analysis, and high stability for excellent reliability of the analysis under many harsh conditions. We believe this strategy is potentially applicable to the synthesis of many other types of plasmonic nanostructures with inherent nanogaps for many sensing and imaging applications.

中文简介： 贵金属纳米间隙结构的可控合成是构建拉曼增强热点的最有效途径之一，对基于表面增强拉曼散射（SERS）的分析检测等应用具有重要的意义。

本工作通过使用亚硫酸金钠为金源，聚乙烯吡咯烷酮为结构导向剂，实现了对银纳米片可控的置换反应，成功合成了一类新型的多孔金银合金纳米片材料。由于一价金盐的使用，该材料具有较高的金银比，显示出很高的化学稳定性。基于这两方面的因素，该材料在表面增强拉曼散射应用中显示出优异的分子检测灵敏度和可靠性。

该工作是在国家自然科学基金和科研启动经费等支持下完成的，论文发表在纳米材料领域权威期刊Nanoscale（影响因子 7.76）上。