Rapid and large-scale synthesis of pitaya-like silver nanostructures as highly efficient surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates

A new wet-chemical approach to prepare surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active substrates with pitaya-like silver nanostructures (PSNs) was proposed. It has been found that the morphology of as-prepared products is dependent on the reaction parameters. PSNs exhibit a high detection sensitivity of surface-enhanced Raman scattering for Rhodamine 6G (R6G) with a limit of detection of 1.0×10−13 mol L−1. This facile, large-scale, low-cost, and green chemistry synthesized Ag nanostructures make it a perfect choice for practical SERS detection applications.