Material design, development, and trend for surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful and non-invasive spectroscopic technique that can provide rich and specific chemical fingerprint information for various target molecules through effective SERS substrates. In view...

Advancements in mercury detection using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and ion-imprinted polymers (IIPs): a review

“…The deployment of nanomaterials in the construction of SERS substrates continues to provide impressive signal enhancement by a factor ranging from 10 6 to 10 15 , depending on the strength of the electromagnetic field experienced by molecules at the surface of various plasmonic nanostructures. 50–52 Moreover, the use of nanomaterials in SERS not only enhances sensitivity but also facilitates the miniaturization of sensing platforms. 53 This, in turn, enables the implementation of these sensors for on-site or remote quantitative analysis of analytes, offering a practical solution for real-time monitoring of mercury levels in various environments.…”

Synergetic Electromagnetic Enhancement and Charger Transfer in Boat-Like Au/PbS/Au Nanohybrids with Increased SERS Activity for Ultrasensitive Molecular Detection

“…Compared with single metal or semiconductor substrates, metal/semiconductor hybrids have many merits to produce high-efficiency SERS signals. The synergistic effect of electromagnetic enhancement and charge transfer can jointly improve the SERS activity. − This phenomenon has been found in many metal/semiconductor hybrids, such as Au/CdS, Ag/GaN, and Au/TiO 2 hybrids. − Meanwhile, the charge transfer efficiency between Raman probe and substrate can be further tuned due to the electron transfer and hot electron injection between metal and semiconductor, which can further improve the SERS activity. − Since the SERS efficiency of metal/semiconductor hybrids is highly dependent on the component, architecture, some effective strategies have been proposed to optimize the SERS performance, such as tuning the metal morphology and adjusting the contact modes. − However, in many metal/semiconductor nanohybrids, the huge near-field enhancement is usually hindered by a semiconductor shell. , Although the charge-transfer efficiency can be improved by plasmonic near-field enhancement, the electromagnetic field is greatly weakened, thus leading to limited SERS improvement. It still remains a challenge to design metal/semiconductor hybrids with simultaneous optimization of near-field enhancement and charge transfer for a highly improved SERS.…”

Flexible Multicavity SERS Substrate Based on Ag Nanoparticle-Decorated Aluminum Hydrous Oxide Nanoflake Array for Highly Sensitive In Situ Detection

“…Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), as one kind of highly sensitive, nondestructive, label-free, and molecular-specific spectroscopy tool, has witnessed increasing applications in various fields ranging from chemical sensing, food safety, and environmental monitoring, to the pharmacy industry. − Traditional SERS substrates are based on depositing plasmonic nanoparticles (Au, Ag, Cu, etc.) on rigid substrates such as glass slides and silicon wafers . With these substrates, sophisticated extraction of analytes and tedious sample preparation steps prior to SERS analysis are required, limiting their real-time and on-field detection .…”