Constructing well defined nanostructure is the primary step realizing the SERS detection with high sensitivity. The solid substrate prepared by liquid-liquid interface self-assembly has been demonstrated with the controllable and...

No abstract

Recently, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based detection strategies have been widely developed for various practical applications, due to the near-single-molecule sensitivity and fingerprint identification capability. However, the qualitative and quantitative reliability of SERS have always been questioned when comparing with the classical GC/LC-MS techniques. Here, we systematically compared the properties of SERS and LC-MS in the detection of an unexpected herbicide in commercial herbicide. The result showed that, in the case of the ultra-trace target detection in a complicated matrix, SERS-based strategy exhibited high sensitivity and a much higher detection efficiency than the LC-MS-based one, which demonstrated a more accurate quantifiability being facilitated with a well-controlled sample pretreatment. Therefore, we showed that SERS could be further implemented in fast and on-site detection tools for food safety application and environment monitoring. K E Y W O R D S fast and on-site detection, high sensitivity, non-targeting detection, reliable quantifiability, surfaceenhanced Raman spectroscopy Cheng Pan and Hongju Chen contributed equally to this study.