Revealing the spatial distribution of the site enhancement for the surface enhanced Raman scattering on the regular nanoparticle arrays

The spatial distribution of the site enhancement for the surfaceenhanced Raman scattering (SERS) on the regular nanoparticle arrays has been investigated by the confocal Raman microscopy. It was found that the spatial distribution of the Raman signals on the well-ordered nanoparticle arrays was very inhomogeneous and concentrated on the defects of the nanoparticle arrays. The SERS signals were also observed to depend on the thickness of silver film and the defect density. It has been demonstrated that the number of SERS active sites can be increased ten folds by trimming the size of nanoparticles using oxygen plasma.