'Fairy Chimney'-Shaped Tandem Metamaterials as Double Resonance SERS Substrates

A highly tunable design for obtaining double resonance substrates to be used in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy is proposed. Tandem truncated nanocones composed of Au-SiO2-Au layers are designed, simulated and fabricated to obtain resonances at laser excitation and Stokes frequencies. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering experiments are conducted to compare the enhancements obtained from double resonance substrates to those obtained from single resonance gold truncated nanocones. The best enhancement factor obtained using the new design is 3.86 x 107. The resultant tandem structures are named after Fairy Chimneys rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey.