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

The construction of noble-metal incorporated semiconductorhybridsfor the detection of antibiotics has intrigued great interest amongresearchers in the field of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).However, the production of SERS substrates to accomplish the effectiveenhancement of the Raman signal was a bottleneck to researchers forthe past decades. This study investigates the SERS performance ofanisotropic Ag nanoprisms (Ag NPrs) attached onto the surface of Cu2O microspheres for the trace-level antibiotic detection ofnitrofurazone (NFZ). Physicochemical activities and surface morphologiesof the prepared hybrids were meticulously examined using various analyticaltechniques. The eminent sharp tips and edges of Ag NPrs depositedon Cu2O microspheres endow enormous intensity enhancementof the Raman signal of NFZ in the innumerable hotspot regions throughthe synergistic utilization of electromagnetic enhancement and chargetransfer enhancement. The proposed hybrid-based SERS substrate providessuperior detection performance, including high sensitivity, high enhancementfactor of 2.31 x 10(11), ultra-low limit of detectionof 5.80 x 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 pondwater shows satisfactory recovery values from 81 to 96%. The presentedsensing characteristics demonstrate that the proposed Ag-NPrs/Cu2O-based SERS substrate possesses promising features for detectingNFZ in standard and real-sample applications.