This work describes a rapid route to prepare monodispersed silver nanocubes. By adding a trace amount of sodium tetrahydridoborate and hydrochloric acid to the conventional polyon synthesis, the reaction time was significantly shortened from 16-26 h to 4-5 h, increasing both the rate of production and uniformly the shape of monodispersed nanocubes of 40; 60 and 70 nm in size. The synthesized Ag nanocubes have been characterized by UV-vis, TEM, and XRD. Our results show that the SERS technique

more »

... able to detect Rd3B within wide concentration range, i.e. 10 -14 -10 -8 M, with lower limit of detection (LOD) being 10 -14 M. It demonstrates that the Ag nanocubes have potential applications in SERS for the detection of biomolecules and biomarkers (or dye molecules) to early detection and diagnosis of cancers or serious diseases.