l-Arginine-assisted one-pot synthesis of hierarchical Ag1Pt2 nanocorallines for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

[Display omitted] •Ag1Pt2 NCs were facilely prepared by a one-pot wet-chemical method.•l-Arginine was used as the eco-friendly shape-directing agent.•The architectures showed significantly enhanced SERS signals for 4-NTP and 4-MBA.•The SERS-active substrate was explored for the assay of 4-NTP and 4-MBA. The hierarchical multi-branched Ag1Pt2 nanocorallines (NCs) were prepared in a large scale by a rapid aqueous method, using l-arginine as the eco-friendly shape-directing agent. The product was mainly characterized by microscopy measurements, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The architectures exhibited superior surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with 4-nitrothiophenol (4-NTP), the enhancement factor (EF) of 1.3×105, a wide linear range of 10–100μM and a low detection limit of 0.01μM. Meanwhile, the SERS-active substrate was explored for the assay of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) with significantly enhanced SERS performance. It means Ag1Pt2 NCs as a good Raman-active platform for sensing in food and environment analysis, owing to their rough surfaces and unique multi-branched structures.