Comparison of Silica and Sapphire Fiber SERS Probes Fabricated by a Femtosecond Laser

Abstract

Different types of fibers were compared for construction of reflection-based surface-enhanced Raman-scattering (SERS) fiber probes. The probes were made by direct femtosecond (fs) laser micromachining of nanometer structures on the fiber endface and subsequent chemical plating of a thin layer of silver. Rhodamine 6G solutions were used to evaluate the performance of the SERS probes. In comparison with the silica fibers, the single-crystal sapphire fiber has much lower background Raman scattering. The fs laser is found effective to fabricate high-quality sapphire fiber SERS probes for detection of weak Raman signals in a reflection configuration.

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Second Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Sponsor(s)

National Energy Technology Laboratory (U.S.)

Comments

This work was supported by the Department of Energy--National Energy Technology Laboratory under Contract DE-FE0001127.

Keywords and Phrases

Fiber optic sensors; Probes; Raman scattering; Raman spectroscopy; Sapphire; Silica; Single crystals; Surface scattering; Ultrafast lasers; Ultrashort pulses, Chemical plating; Femtosecond (fs) laser; Nanometer structure; Reflection configuration; Sapphire fiber; Silica fibers; Single crystal sapphire fibers; Surface enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS); Fibers; Femtosecond laser; Single-crystal sapphirefiber

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1041-1135; 1941-0174

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2014 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jul 2014

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