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Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy provides a noninvasive and highly sensitive route for fingerprint and label‐free detection of a wide range of molecules. Recently, flexible SERS has attracted increasingly tremendous research interest due to its unique advantages compared to rigid substrate‐based SERS. Here, the latest advances in flexible substrate‐based SERS diagnostic devices are investigated in‐depth. First, the intriguing prospect of point‐of‐care diagnostics is briefly described, followed by an introduction to the cutting‐edge SERS technique. Then, the focus is moved from conventional rigid substrate‐based SERS to the emerging flexible SERS technique. The main part of this report highlights the recent three categories of flexible SERS substrates, including actively tunable SERS, swab‐sampling strategy, and the in situ SERS detection approach. Furthermore, other promising means of flexible SERS are also introduced. The flexible SERS substrates with low‐cost, batch‐fabrication, and easy‐to‐operate characteristics can be integrated into portable Raman spectroscopes for point‐of‐care diagnostics, which are conceivable to penetrate global markets and households as next‐generation wearable sensors in the near future.

A green solvothermal synthesis approach employing water as a hollowing controller and diethylenetriamine as both crystal growth stabilizer and N dopant source to the preparation of hierarchical N-doped TiO(2) hollow microspheres comprised of nanothorns with exposed anatase {101} facets is established. The superstructured TiO(2) shows excellent photocatalytic activities in degrading dyes under visible light irradiation.

A high-power continuous-wave (cw) Nd:YAG laser operating at 946 nm by utilizing a quasi-three-level transition is reported. The laser consists of a composite Nd:YAG rod end pumped by a fiber-coupled diode laser and a simple plane-concave cavity. At an incident pump power of 40.2 W, a maximum cw output of 15.2 W at 946 nm is obtained, achieving a slope efficiency of 45%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output at 946 nm ever generated by diode-pumped Nd:YAG lasers. In addition, at an incident pump power of 15.2 W, a 1.25 W blue output at 473 nm is achieved with a simple compact three-element cavity and a type-I lithium triborate (LiB(3)O(5)) crystal as a frequency doubler.

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