Improved Enhancement Factor for SERS using Broad Ion Beam Induced Self-organized Gold Nanocones

Sparsely distributed and self-organized gold-nanocones are fabricated by broad argon ion beam sputtering on the gold surface with grazing incident angle. The rotation of the sample with respect to the vertical axis has found to influence the morphology of the obtained nanostructures. Ion beam irradiation of the sample leads to formation of nanoripples when the sample is held stationary, otherwise nanocones are formed if the sample is rotated during irradiation. A hybrid gold-nanocone/graphene/gold-nanohole based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor is proposed and shown to exhibit an enhancement factor of 109 via finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations.