Gold mesostructures with tailored surface topography and their self-assembly arrays for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

We report a facile particle mediated aggregation protocol to synthesize "sea urchin"-like gold mesoparticles with tailored surface topography via a secondary nucleation and growth process. Surprisingly, these multitip Au mesoparticles are capable of self-assembling into monolayer or multiple layer arrays on Si substrates with a convincing reproducibility and homogeneity over large areas. Raman measurements show that these individual sea urchin-like multitipped gold mesoparticles exhibit a high enhancement of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). In addition, the sea urchin-like mesoparticle arrays display a further enhancement of SERS by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude over the individual mesoparticle due to the formation of additional hot spots between the particles. The current protocol stands out as a potentially interesting approach for the fabrication of technologically important SERS-based sensors.