Differently shaped metal nanoparticles for the enhancement of the Raman response

This contribution is aimed at describing the most recent activity carried out in the labs of ISC-CNR, Florence concerning preparation and spectroscopic investigation of Au and Cu nanoparticles of different dimensions and morphology, with particular focus on the properties of enhancement of the Raman response of molecular adsorbates. In this framework, we also studied both theoretically and experimentally, metal nanostars, whose morphology can be tuned in a controlled way, so that they are expected to behave as SERS active material from 500 up to 1200 nm.