SERS-Active Silver Nanoprisms Deposited on Cuprous Oxide Microspheres for Detection of Nitrofurazone

The construction of noble-metal incorporated semiconductor hybrids for the detection of antibiotics has intrigued great interest among researchers in the field of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). However, the production of SERS substrates to accomplish the effective enhancement of the Raman signal was a bottleneck to researchers for the past decades. This study investigates the SERS performance of anisotropic Ag nanoprisms (Ag NPrs) attached onto the surface of Cu2O microspheres for the trace-level antibiotic detection of nitrofurazone (NFZ). Physicochemical activities and surface morphologies of the prepared hybrids were meticulously examined using various analytical techniques. The eminent sharp tips and edges of Ag NPrs deposited on Cu2O microspheres endow enormous intensity enhancement of the Raman signal of NFZ in the innumerable hotspot regions through the synergistic utilization of electromagnetic enhancement and charge transfer enhancement. The proposed hybrid-based SERS substrate provides superior detection performance, including high sensitivity, high enhancement factor of 2.31 × 1011, ultra-low limit of detection of 5.80 × 10–13 M, superior spot-to-spot uniformity, and substrate-to-substrate reproducibility <8.31% for NFZ detection. Furthermore, the real-sample analysis performed on NFZ in local pond water shows satisfactory recovery values from 81 to 96%. The presented sensing characteristics demonstrate that the proposed Ag-NPrs/Cu2O-based SERS substrate possesses promising features for detecting NFZ in standard and real-sample applications.