Surface-plasmon enhanced Raman scattering of DNA molecules on regular arrays of modified gold nanoparticles

We performed surface-plasmon enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies of a DNA monolayer on chemically modified Au nanoparticle arrays. Drastic enhancement of Raman signal from DNA molecules was observed on the optimized templates that were prepared by using electron-beam lithography followed by chemical modification. We observed that Raman signal of DNA molecules was enhanced when the surface plasmons in the closely-spaced Au nanoparticles were resonantly excited. Our results suggest that the artificial generation of spatially controlled hot spots for SERS can be achieved by this technique.