Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) represents a very powerful tool for the identification of molecular species, but unfortunately it has been essentially restricted to noble metal supports (Au, Ag and Cu). While the application of semiconductor materials as SERS substrate would enormously widen the range of uses for this technique, the detection sensitivity has been much inferior and the achievable SERS enhancement was rather limited, thereby greatly limiting the practical applications. Here we report the employment of non-stoichiometric tungsten oxide nanostructure, sea urchin-like W18O49 nanowire, as the substrate material, to magnify the substrate–analyte molecule interaction, leading to significant magnifications in Raman spectroscopic signature. The enrichment of surface oxygen vacancy could bring additional enhancements. The detection limit concentration was as low as 10−7 M and the maximum enhancement factor was 3.4 × 105, in the rank of the highest sensitivity, to our best knowledge, among semiconducting materials, even comparable to noble metals without ‘hot spots'.

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In order to get a methane catalytic combustion micro-sensor, two different catalytic systems used in traditional methane catalytic combustion sensors were fabricated into a mesoporous structure and their catalytic activities were investigated. In comparison, the Rh2O3-Al2O3 system can form more a uniform mesoporous structure and has a much higher specific surface area. Even more importantly, it has relatively higher catalytic activity and stability for the methane catalytic combustion reaction. After being coated on a microelectro-mechanical system (MEMS) micro-heater, a catalytic combustion type methane micro-sensor was fabricated. The meso-structured Rh2O3-Al2O3 hybrid based MEMS sensor demonstrated a short T90 response time, relatively high signal output, high enough signal/noise ratio for practical detecting and strong anti-poison properties.