Femtosecond Laser Structuring for Flexible Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrates

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an optical technique for molecule identification. However, fabrication of flexible and structured SERS substrates for performance improvement in a facile and cost-effective manner is challenging. In this work, we reported a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-based flexible SERS substrate by femtosecond laser direct writing (FsLDW) technology. The femtosecond laser-treated PTFE surface is 3D hierarchical micro-/nano-structures, and the structured PTFE-based SERS chip shows excellent performance enhancement. As a result, 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-7</sup> M can be detected, which shows excellent potentials in developing flexible SERS for wearable electronics.