Fabrication of Poly(styrene-co-maleic anhydride)@Ag Spheres with High Surface Charge Intensity and their Self-Assembly into Photonic Crystal Films

Jiajie Bi; Genrui Fan; Suli Wu; Xin Su; Hongbo Xia; Shu-Fen Zhang

doi:10.1002/open.201700118

Fabrication of Poly(styrene-co-maleic anhydride)@Ag Spheres with High Surface Charge Intensity and their Self-Assembly into Photonic Crystal Films

ChemistryOpen. 2017 Aug 15;6(5):637-641. doi: 10.1002/open.201700118. eCollection 2017 Oct.

Authors

Jiajie Bi¹, Genrui Fan¹, Suli Wu¹, Xin Su¹, Hongbo Xia¹, Shu-Fen Zhang¹

Affiliation

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals Dalian University of Technology Dalian 116024 P. R. China.

Abstract

Herein, we developed a method to prepare monodisperse poly(styrene-co-maleic anhydride)@Ag (PSMA@Ag) core-shell microspheres with high surface charge intensity by using an in situ reduction method. In this method, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid tetrasodium salt (Na₄EDTA) was used as a reducing agent to promote the growth of Ag, and at the same time endowed the PSMA@Ag spheres with a surface charge. The monodispersity of PSMA and PSMA@Ag and the ordered array of the photonic crystal films were characterized by using SEM. The formation of Ag nanoparticles was confirmed by using TEM, HR-TEM, and XRD characterizations. Due to the existence of surface charges, the obtained PSMA@Ag microspheres easily self-assembled to form photonic crystal structures. In addition, the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity of the PSMA@Ag photonic crystal films was evaluated by detecting the signal from Raman probe molecules, 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP). The PSMA@Ag photonic crystal films exhibited a high SERS effect, a low detection limit of up to 10^-8 for 4-ATP, good uniformity, and reproducibility.

Keywords: Raman spectroscopy; photonic crystals; self-assembly; surface plasmon resonance.