Au nanoparticles decorated β-BiO as highly-sensitive SERS substrate for detection of methylene blue and methyl orange.

In this work, Au/BiO was synthesized by loading Au nanoparticles (NPs) onto β-BiO by a simple solution reduction method. β-BiO was synthesized by a precipitation-thermal decomposition procedure, which results in significantly improved SERS detection limits down to 10 M for methylene blue (MB) and 10 M for methyl orange (MO) as probe molecules, comparable to those reported for the best semiconductor SERS substrates. In particular, further deposition of Au NPs (5.