A novel surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy substrate based on hybrid structure of monolayer graphene and Cu nanoparticles for adenosine detection

•We have presented a novel surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrate based on hybrid structure of graphene and Cu nanoparticles for adenosine detection.•The SERS substrate we designed is an ideal platform for concentration detection and we explained the phenomenon based on molecular adsorption state. We present a novel surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrate based on a double-deck hybrid system assembled by monolayer graphene and Cu nanoparticle layer. The monolayer graphene film was grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology. The Cu nanoparticles with a uniform distribution were synthesized by liquor-phase reduction synthesis (LPRS) method on the SiO2 (3cm×3cm) substrate. By transferring graphene onto the Cu nanoparticle layer, we fabricated graphene/Cu nanoparticle hybrids (G/CuNPs) SERS substrate. The hybrid SERS substrate showed excellent Raman enhancement effect for adenosine. A reasonable linear response between the SERS intensity and adenosine concentration was obtained in the concentrations of 10−2–10−6M. This work provided amazing potential for sensitive label-free detection of biomolecular.