Self‐organized Polymer Wrinkles: A Lithography‐free Pathway for Surface‐enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Substrates

Abstract

Self‐organized pattern formation is a phenomenon that can be used for nanoscale pattering of large surface areas in a cost‐effective manner. We exploit the phenomenon and fabricate sub‐micron polystyrene wrinkle structures and demonstrate that after being coated with silver, they can be used as surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates. We show that the signal enhancement generated by the wrinkles is 8 times higher in comparison to a flat reference while the measurement repeatability is simultaneously improved (variation reduced from 30 to 13%). The results indicate that self‐organization could be further utilized in cost‐effective, large‐scale production of SERS substrates.