Silver nanostructure-decorated hierarchical titanium dioxide nanoflowers for SERS and photocatalytic applications

In this study, we propose the synthesis of silver (Ag) nanoparticle decorated TiO2 nanoflowers (TNFs) using a polymeric conformal thin film of 3,4-dihydroxyphenyl-L-alanine (PLDOPA). The size, as well as interparticle distance of the decorated Ag nanostructures, were tuned by simply changing the number of supplied Ag ions. The resultant nanocomposite system ([email protected]@Ag) showed unique SERS activity with high reproducibility and an enhancement factor of 4.2 × 107. Also, as an ideal photocatalytic system, the [email protected]@Ag enabled the catalytic degradation of malachite green under visible light irradiation.