Nanostructured gold-coated AFM tips generated by potentiostatic electrodeposition for tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

[Display omitted] •TERS probes are generated by cost-effective potentiostatic electrodeposition of gold.•The deposition occurs by instantaneous nucleation of gold.•The TERS probes appear robust and efficient for TERS applications.•TERS imaging can be performed with lateral spatial resolution below 20 nm.•Graphene oxide flakes and carbon nanotubes are chemically characterized. Potentiostatic electrodeposition was used to manufacture gold-coated atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips for applications in tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). The growth of the gold film was found to be initiated by the instantaneous nucleation mechanism on the doped-silicon AFM tip taken as substrate. This cost-effective method allowed robust AFM-TERS probes with localized surface plasmon resonances in the visible range to be produced with 53 % yield. These probes enable TERS mapping of a graphene oxide flake and a carbon nanotube to be performed with lateral spatial resolution below 20 nm, which was uncorrelated with the curvature radius of the metallized tip apex.