Interfacial-Shear-Mediated Snowball Assembly of Hotspot-Rich Silver Pompon Architectures for Tailored Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Responses

To gain superior signal-enhanced performance, metal nanocrystals serving as building blocks can be collectively assembled into a hierarchically ordered structure for creating multiple hotspots. However, the collaborative assembly of anisotropic crystals to form a hotspot-rich structure remains a challenging task. In this study, controllable shear was introduced to a soft liquid-liquid interface to provide a unique environment for the snowball assembly of silver pompon architectures (Ag-PAs). Micrometer-scale 3D plasmonic Ag pompon architectures composed of densely packed nanoparticles (NPs) are fabricated using shear-mediating crystal growth dynamics. The crystal morphology and size are easily controlled by tuning the interfacial shear and diffusion pathways. The hotspot-rich Ag-PAs with high sensitivity (LOD = 1.1 x 10-13 mol/L) exhibit a superior Raman enhancement performance, which is comparable to some bimetals.