Deep Eutectic Solvent-Assisted Synthesis of Au Nanostars Supported on Graphene Oxide as an Efficient Substrate for SERS-Based Molecular Sensing

Abstract

The development of hybrid nanostructures of graphene oxide (GO) and metal nanoparticles (NPs) is of paramount interest for highly flexible surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate-based molecular sensing. In this work, we report a simple and eco-friendly synthesis strategy for the synthesis of a three-dimensional (3D) GO/gold nanostar (3D GO/Au NS) hybrid nanocomposite using deep eutectic solvent (DES) for SERS-based molecular sensing. The 3D GO/Au NS hybrid nanocomposite was obtained by a two-step synthetic process. In the first step, the GO nanosheets of thickness ∼1.25 nm were homogeneously dispersed in choline chloride/urea (molar ratio of 1:2)-derived DES, followed by functionalization of -NH groups using 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane. Afterward, the presynthesized Au NSs of size ranging between 150-200 nm were then covalently attached on the -NH-functionalized GO nanosheets mediated by DES at 60 °C to obtain 3D GO/Au NS hybrid nanocomposites. Importantly, the SERS substrate fabricated using the 3D GO/Au NS hybrid nanocomposite exhibits highly enhanced SERS activity with an enhancement factor of 1.7 × 105 and high sensitivity for the detection of crystal violet with a concentration up to 10-11 M. The green synthetic approach presented here can be expected to be promising for the large-scale fabrication of GO-metal NP-based hybrid nanostructures for their potential applications in SERS-based sensing.