Concave gold nanoparticles on aluminum as surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy substrate for detection of thiram

We report a simple preparation of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates with gold concave nanocubes of different sizes, deposited onto aluminum slides. The SERS substrates were characterized using 4-Aminothiophenol. Resulting in that the substrate prepared with 55 nm nanocubes exhibits the higher analytical enhancement factor (AEF), 1.5 × 106. Moreover, the SERS substrates’ performance was also evaluated for thiram detection using a series of water and tomato juice samples spiked with the pesticide. Our results show that the excellent performance of the substrate allows the detection of thiram with high sensitivity. The substrates were able to detect thiram with a limit of detection of 7 ppm and 14 ppm, respectively, in water and tomato juice. Our preliminary results open the possibility of using our methodology to detect diverse pollutants of interest.