Ag nanoflowers@g-C3N4 nanocomposite for sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering sensing

Noble metal@functional material composites are a promising SERS platform that can overcome the limitations of traditional noble metal-only substrate, achieving the enhancement of SERS performance and the expansion of functionalities. Aiming to obtain high-performance composite SERS substrate, herein, the Ag nanoflowers (NFs)@g-C 3 N 4 hybrid was synthesized by a facile method. The prepared Ag NFs@g-C 3 N 4 substrate achieved highly sensitive SERS detection towards crystal violet with a detection limit down to 10 −11 M. At the same time, a relative standard deviation of less than 15 % for the SERS signal illustrates the satisfactory homogeneity of the obtained substrate. The remarkable SERS activity was attributed to the plasmonic enhancement from Ag NFs and the molecular adsorption capability from g-C 3 N 4 . When employing the Ag NFs@g-C 3 N 4 substrate to detect antibacterial residues in river water, the experimental results show that the detection limits for malachite green and methylene blue are 10 −6 M. This work develops a sensitive nanocomposite SERS substrate for trace molecules detection.