English

Enhancement factor distribution around a single SERS Hot-spot and its relation to Single Molecule detection

Chemical Physics 2009-11-13 v1 Optics

Abstract

We provide the theoretical framework to understand the phenomenology and statistics of single-molecule (SM) signals arising in Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) under the presence of so-called electromagnetic hot-spots (HS's). We show that most characteristics of the SM-SERS phenomenon can be tracked down to the presence of tail-like (power law) distribution of enhancements and we propose a specific model for it. We analyze, in the light of this, the phenomenology of SM-SERS and show how the different experimental manifestations of the effect reported in the literature can be analyzed and understood under a unified ``universal'' framework with a minimum set of parameters.

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/0608139,
  title  = {Enhancement factor distribution around a single SERS Hot-spot and its relation to Single Molecule detection},
  author = {E. C. Le Ru and P. G. Etchegoin and M. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0608139},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Chem. Phys

R2 v1 2026-07-22T19:12:05.014Z