Synthesis of polyvinyl alcohol/Ag electrospun nanofibers as highly efficient flexible SERS substrates

In this study, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofiber substrates containing silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were formed by electrospun method. AgNPs were synthesized by in-situ reduction approach under the UV irradiation using PVA as the stabilizer and reductant. SEM, TEM , FTIR, Raman and UV–vis were used to characterize the nanofiber substrates. The results indicated that the average diameter of electrospun flexible PVA/Ag fibers was 250 nm, and the spherical Ag NPs with mean size of less than 10 nm were uniformly embedded into the PVA nanofibers. There appeared a broad absorption peak at 450 nm, which originated from the SPR effect of Ag NPs. The PVA/Ag substrate as-prepared showed the excellent Raman enhancement performance for Rhodamine 6 G detecting. The limit of detection for PVA/Ag SERS substrate was 10 −5 M and the enhancement factor (EF) was 1.58 × 10 5 . Moreover, 20 points were randomly selected for testing and the RSD was 8.81 %, indicating the PVA/Ag electrospun nanofibers SERS substrates had excellent uniformity.