Full wetting of plasmonic nanopores through two-component droplets

Abstract

Benefiting from the prospect of extreme light localization, plasmonic metallic nanostructures are bringing advantages in many applications. However, for use in liquids, the hydrophobic nature of the metallic surface inhibits full wetting, which is related to contact line pinning in the nanostructures. In this work, we use a two-component droplet to overcome this problem. Due to a strong internal flow generated from the solutal Marangoni effect, these droplets can easily prime metallic nanostructures including sub-10 nm nanopores. We subsequently evaluate the local wetting performance of the plasmonic structures using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Compared with other commonly used surface cleaning based wetting methods such as the oxygen plasma treatment, our two-component drop method is an efficient method in resolving the pinning of contact lines and is also non-destructive to samples. Thus the method described here primes plasmonic devices with guaranteed performances in liquid applications.