Gold nanoparticles decorated crystalline carbon nitride nano-walls as a SERS chip for rapid and sensitive detection of benzidine.

Risk level of benzidine residue to the environment and food safety urges surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates to develop with high sensitivity and rapid enrichment. Herein, a hybrid of Au NPs decorated crystalline carbon nitride nano-walls (Au/CCN NWs) is fabricated on Al sheet and employed as a SERS substrate for the first time. An electro-enhanced adsorption strategy is employed to endow as-prepared Au/CCN NWs/Al chip with rapid assay capability. Crystalline phase transition and nano-wall morphology respectively bestows high charge transfer efficiency and favorable enrichment activity upon Au/CCN NWs/Al chip, and the hybrid substrate owns a considerable enhancement factor of 1.76 × 10 under static adsorption mode. Moreover, Au/CCN NWs/Al substrate can achieve the saturation enrichment of benzidine in 120 s with the help of electro-enhanced adsorption, and gains a significantly enhanced signal response compared to static adsorption. Likewise, the highly sensitive response (1 μg L), superior reproducibility (RSD = 9.11 %, n = 100) and reliable accuracy (recovery rate of 95.55 %-109.46 %) jointly demonstrate that Au/CCN NWs/Al substrate may be applicable for detecting benzidine residue in actual application. This work offers an integrated solution to both enhance charge transfer efficiency and enrichment activity based on collaborative crystalline phase transition and electro-enhanced adsorption, and may inspire the design of novel noble metal/semiconductor hybrid SERS substrates.