“…As the most promising point-of-care testing (POCT) method, immunochromatographic assay (ICA) has attracted extensive attention because of its distinct advantages including portability, rapidness, low cost, and ability for multitarget analysis. − However, traditional ICA test strips employ a colloidal gold nanoparticle (AuNP) as the colorimetric signal reporter, which usually suffers from low sensitivity and quantitative ability and thus cannot meet the requirement of food safety screening. , In recent years, a novel surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-based ICA technique has been developed using SERS nanotags as superior optical reporters, which can generate ultrastrong (sensitive), specific (characteristic peak), and stable (no photobleaching) Raman signals for target quantification. − A variety of colloidal SERS tags (e.g., Au, Au@Ag, SiO 2 @Ag NPs) have been successfully applied in SERS-based ICA systems to achieve the sensitive detection of biomolecules (e.g., biomarkers, toxins, and immunoglobulins) in clinical samples or harmful ingredients (e.g., pesticides and mycotoxins) in food samples. − However, for microorganism detection, two major difficulties need to be solved via the SERS-ICA method. First, the size of foodborne pathogens is rather huge (0.5–3 μm) for the ICA system; as such, a NC membrane with big pores is required to provide good transport, thereby affecting the sensitivity and ability of multichannel detection.…”