Ag Nanostructures on Poly(3-hexylthiophene) and Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Substrates for SERS Detection of Rhodamine B and Electrochemical Detection of Hydrogen Peroxide

Superstructures with controlled particle congregation exhibit an increasing influence on the properties of materials, thus tuning the nucleation and interaction of nanoparticles is important for the assembly process. In this work, a photovoltaic heterojunction of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWNTs) (PsS) is utilized as a substrate for assembly of Ag nanoparticles, and two distinct Ag structures were achieved, which are, respectively, the nanoporous cubes (NCs) formed with illumination and the nanodendrites (NDs) without illumination. The morphologies and the growth mechanism of these Ag superstructures were investigated, and their application performances were also explored. Ag NCs shows the very high sensitivity for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activities for Rhodamine B (RhB) and efficient electrochemical reduction for H2O2, which demonstrate the excellent properties of the unique nanoporous cubic morphology. This work highlights the advanced photovoltaic substrate to for producing hierarchical superstructure with illumination, which is expected to become a promising and favorable option in the controllable fabrication of superstructures.