Sputtered silver oxide layers for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

We present results of reactively sputtered silver oxide thin films as a substrate material for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Herein, we show that deposited layers develop an increasingly strong SERS activity upon photoactivation at 488 nm. A benzoic acid/2-propanol solution was used to demonstrate that the bonding of molecules to SERS active sites at the surface can be followed by investigating temporal changes of the corresponding Raman intensities. Furthermore, the laser-induced structural changes in the silver oxide layers lead to a fluctuating SERS activity at high laser intensities which also affects the spectral features of amorphous carbon impurities. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.