Beetle wing inspired fabrication of nanojunction based biomimetic SERS substrates for sensitive detection of analytes

Spectral tuning of biotemplated ZnO photonic nanoarchitectures for photocatalytic applications

“…The comparison of reaction rates (figure 5) for unstructured glass, and butterfly wings containing photonic nanoarchitectures, clearly shows that by biotemplating nanoarchitectures and exploiting the effect of the PBG, significant increase of the reaction rate can be achieved, up to 3.3 times if compared to ZnO coated glass, despite the fact that the absorption band of Rh B falls outside of the spectral region where ZnO absorbs light (figure 1 a ). This increase is associated with slow light effects [17] arising due to the presence of the photonic nanoarchitecture of biologic origin, as the red edge of the PBG is active from a slow light perspective [40]. As seen in figure 1 b , the absorption band of Rh B and the reflectance of the Morpho sulkowskyi wing covered by 15 nm conformal ZnO show a good overlap, while it also preserves its intensive structural colour.…”

“…Therefore, in these wavelength ranges they reflect light and may produce the enhancement of photocatalytic efficiency by the socalled slow light effect [12]. Such surfaces could be useful under both aspects of enhancing photocatalytic efficiency: by increasing the effective adsorption surface and enhancing the interaction of light/photocatalyst/adsorbate to be decomposed [13][14][15][16][17]. Last but not least, these photonic nanoarchitectures are produced by biologic routes at ambient conditions, without the need of harmful substances and energy intensive procedures, and can be directly used in the experiments as PBG material prototypes.…”

Synergistic SERS enhancement and in situ monitoring of photocatalytic reactions in a plasmonic metal/ferroelectric hybrid system by the light-induced pyroelectric effect

“…N SERS and N REF represented the total number of the MB molecules measured with and without substrate materials, respectively. 40,41 The EF of the vibrational modes at 1620 cm −1 was calculated to be about 8.3 × 10 9 for the MB molecules, indicating a fairly high SERS activity of the Ag–BiFeO 3 /CNFs. Moreover, six cycles of repeated light-induced pyroelectric charge were applied to demonstrate the reusability of the Ag–BiFeO 3 /CNF substrate to boost SERS signals, and as shown in Fig.…”