Inter-coffee-ring effects boost rapid and highly reliable SERS detection of TPhT on a light-confining structure

Abstract

Triphenyltin chloride (TPhT) is a widely applied toxic compound that poses a significant threat to humans and the environment. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), capable of non-destructive, rapid, and trace detection, is desirable to better evaluate its distribution and content. However, a sensitive method with simple measuring protocols which maintains excellent reproducibility remains challenging. Here, we proposed an inter-coffee-ring effect to accelerate the sampling and measuring process while maintaining highly reproducible results. Two overlapping coffee-rings are formed through sequenced drying of gold nanorod colloids and a gold nanorod TPhT mixture on a superhydrophobic light-confining structure. Both the gold nanorods and the TPhT are enriched in the overlapping region. The gold nanorods reordered in such an area under the inter-coffee-ring effect yielded vast numbers of consistent hotspots at the sub-2 nm level. Such consistency leads to excellent SERS performance under the light-confining effect induced by the nanoarray substrates. The detection limits of the probe molecule R6G reached 10⁻¹² M, and TPhT reached 10⁻⁸ M while achieving excellent stability and reproducibility, and a linear regression coefficient above 0.99 was achieved for TPhT. Crucially, the visible nature of the inter-coffee-ring overlap enabled rapid measurements, thus providing robust support for detecting environmental pollutants.