Atmospheric oxidation and carbon contamination of silver and its effect on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is considered a highly promising technology for different analytical purposes. The applications of SERS are still quite limited due its relatively poor quantitative repeatability and the fact that SERS is very sensitive to oxidation, which is a challenge especially with silver based SERS substrates. Here, the link between these phenomena is investigated by exposing silver SERS substrates to ambient laboratory air.

Fabrication of terahertz wire-grid polarizers.

Wire-grid polarizers for terahertz region were fabricated by manufacturing triangular grating using a ruling-based, ultraprecision diamond machining process and replicating the pattern into polymethylpentene (TPX) and cyklo-olefin copolymer (COC) sheets using hot embossing. On top of the imprinted structures, aluminum was evaporated in an oblique angle, forming an aluminum wire grid. The achieved extinction rate was over 150 for TPX polarizers and near 1000 for COC polarizers.