Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Interpenetrating polyaniline-gold electrodes for SERS and electrochemical measurements

Published

Author(s)

Ryan West, Stephen Semancik

Abstract

Facile fabrication of nanostructured electrode arrays is critical for development of bimodal SERS and electrochemical biosensors. In this paper, the variation of applied potential at a polyaniline- coated Pt electrode is used to selectivity deposit Au on the polyaniline amine sites or on the underlying Pt electrode. By alternating the applied potential, the Au is grown simultaneously from the top and the bottom of the polyaniline film, leading to an interpenetrated, nanostructured polymer-metal composite extending from the Pt electrode to the electrolyte solution. The resulting films have unique pH- dependent electrochemical properties, e.g. they retain electrochemical activity in both acidic and neutral solutions, and they also include SERS-active nanostructures. By varying the concentration of chloroaurate used during deposition, Au nanoparticles, nanodendrites, or nanosheets can be selectively grown. For the films deposited under optimal conditions, using 5 mmol/L chloroaurate, the SERS enhancement factor for Rhodamine 6G was found to be as high as 1.1 × 106 with spot-to-spot and electrode-to-electrode relative standard deviations as low as 8% and 12%, respectively. The advantages of the reported PANI-Au composite electrodes lie in their facile fabrication, enabling the targeted deposition of tunable nanostructures on sensing arrays, and their ability to produce orthogonal optical and electrochemical analytical results.
Citation
Applied Surface Science
Volume
387

Keywords

biosensing, conducting polymer, electrochemistry, gold, nanoscience, polyaniline, SERS, Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Citation

West, R. and Semancik, S. (2016), Interpenetrating polyaniline-gold electrodes for SERS and electrochemical measurements, Applied Surface Science, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2016.06.073 (Accessed April 27, 2024)
Created November 29, 2016, Updated October 12, 2021