Plasmon-free polymeric nanowrinkled substrates for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of two-dimensional materials

We report plasmon-free polymeric nanowrinkled substrates for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Our simple, rapid and cost-effective fabrication method involves depositing a poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) prepolymer solution droplet on a fully polymerized, flat PEGDA substrate, followed by drying the droplet at room conditions and plasma treatment, which polymerizes the deposited layer. The thin polymer layer buckles under axial stress during plasma treatment due to its different mechanical properties from the underlying soft substrate, creating hierarchical wrinkled patterns. We demonstrate the variation of the wrinkling wavelength with the drying polymer molecular weight and concentration (direct relations are observed). A transition between micron to nanosized wrinkles is observed at 5 v% concentration of the lower molecular weight polymer solution (PEGDA Mn 250). The wrinkled substrates are observed to be reproducible, stable (at room conditions) and, specially, homogeneous at and below the transition regime, where nanowrinkles dominate, making them suitable candidates for SERS. As a proof-of-concept, the enhanced SERS performance of micro/nano-wrinkled surfaces in detecting graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is illustrated. Compared to the SiO2/Si surfaces, the wrinkled PEGDA substrates significantly enhanced the signature Raman bands intensities of graphene and h-BN by a factor of 8 and 50, respectively.