Facile fabrication of Au nanoworms covered polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film: Towards flexible SERS substrates

Simple, reproducible, large-area fabrication of flexible highly-enhanced polymer-based SERS substrate is well required. In this paper, a facile strategy to obtain worm-like Au nanostructures on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film is proposed, based on Ar plasma etching and Au evaporation. A systematic study on SERS performance versus Ar plasma etching duration and Au deposition thickness is performed for the first time. The optimal flexible Au nanoworms covered PET substrate shows high SERS EF (~1.2 × 108) and trace level detection sensitivity (10-9 M R6G), which helps to push SERS technique forward to fulfill various real-life tasks.