Role of waveguide and surface plasmon resonances in surface-enhanced Raman scattering at coldly evaporated metallic films

A film surface, modeled by a grating with rectangular grooves, is shown to give rise to both short and long ranged enhancements due to excitation of planar surface plasmon resonances, and to short ranged, more intense, enhancements due to excitation of waveguide resonances. The latter type of enhancement is shown to become more intense as the ratio of grating period to groove width increases and to be able to account for experimentally observed SERS signals at very low as well as at higher temperatures.