Dendritic Silver Structures for the SERS Diagnostics of Liquids

The diagnostics and monitoring of trace amounts of technogenic and biological substances are becoming increasingly relevant in the modern world. One approach to solving them is surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). In this work, we propose a variant of manufacturing SERS substrates in the form of dendritic silver nanostructures with the spatial modulation of wettability, which ensures concentration of the analyte upon drying. The proposed technical solutions are tested using rhodamine 6G and 4-aminothiophenol as analytes. The SERS surfaces used for this purpose provide a high measurement sensitivity and are easy and affordable to manufacture.