| Summary: | Herein, we investigate the chemical sensing by surface-enhanced Raman scattering regarding two templates of gold nanocolumns (vertical and tilted) manufactured by glancing angle deposition with magnetron sputtering. We selected this fabrication technique due to its advantages in terms of low-cost production and ease of implementation. These gold nanocolumnar structures allow producing a high density of strongly confined electric field spots within the nanogaps between the neighboring nanocolumns. Thiophenol molecules were used as model analytes since they have the principal property to adsorb well on gold surfaces. Regarding chemical sensing, the vertical (tilted) nanocolumnar templates showed a detection threshold limit of 10 nM (20 nM), an enhancement factor of 9.8 × 10<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mn>8</mn></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula> (4.8 × 10<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mn>8</mn></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula>), and a high quality of adsorption with an adsorption constant <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>K</mi><mrow><mi>a</mi><mi>d</mi><mi>s</mi></mrow></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> of 2.0 × 10<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mn>6</mn></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula> M<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula> (1.8 × 10<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mn>6</mn></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula> M<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msup><mrow></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula>) for thiophenol molecules.
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