Self-assembled monolayer film of concave star-shaped Au nanocrystals as highly efficient SERS substrates

In this work, various geometries of Au nanocrystals with sharp tips including decahedra, concave star, and spindle were synthesized through Ag underpotential deposition-dominated growth approach based on utilizing a novel type of Au nanoseed (i.e., pentatwinned Au nanospheres). These as-prepared Au nanocrystals exhibited a broad localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) tunability from visible to near-infrared region. Furthermore, we fabricated the monolayer film based on Au nanocrystals with different morphologies through liquid/liquid interface self-assembly technique, which displayed strong shape-dependent surface enhanced Raman scatting (SERS) performance. More significantly, concave star-shaped Au nanocrystals with ten sharp tips endowed them with 12-fold higher SERS enhancements than Au nanospheres, which was in line with the simulation results by finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. Our study provides a novel route for fabrication of Au nanocrystals with diversified structures, and the efficient SERS substrates have great prospect for the applications in ultrasensitive chemical and biological sensing.