Pattern transfer is an important tool in the preparation of sensors for Surface Enhanced Sensing. Sensor shelf life is also of concern. If patterns could be transferred in situ, or within a suitably short time frame prior to use, sensors could be employed before they had time to deteriorate. One way to transfer a pattern in situ is mechanical stamping. We have prepared silica sphere masks by evaporative deposition from colloids, and characterized these with photography and microscopy. We use these sphere masks to indent noble metal thin films. The quality of the mask and the metal replica are quantified using Matlab based image analysis programs. We will present results from ongoing experiments measuring extinction and Raman spectra of noble metal thin films bound with the SERS marker thiophenol before and after stamping.

Deforming gold films with patterned colloidal stamps to generate spectroscopically enhancing surfaces

248th National Meeting (2014)

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