Electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM): A new approach to fabricate metal nanostructures

Abstract

Nanoscale printing is growing rapidly as a feasible fabrication method for a wide range of applications, including electronics and nanooptics, sensors, nanorobots, and energy storage. In today's cutting-edge technologies, the constantly reducing dimension necessitates the production of complex conductive structures with nanometre resolution., ECAM methods can produce impurity-free metallic conductors with excellent electrical and mechanical properties; however, the true nanoscale resolution remains very challenging. Here, silver nanostructures are synthesized by an ECAM process and investigated as a substrate for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) detection of aspirin. Various characterizations such as XRD, TEM, HR-TEM, FE-SEM, EDX-mapping, optical, ultraviolet–visible, and Raman spectroscopy are used to analyse ECAM-printed nanostructured silver substrates. A remarkable enhancement factor of ∼ 107 is realized in the silver nanostructured substrates with the detected limit of 10-8 mol. ECAM printed silver nanostructured substrates can thus be used as viable substrates for SERS applications.