Surface enhanced Raman scattering of whole human blood on nanostructured ZnO surface

Abstract

Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) owing to the greatly enhanced sensitivity is widely utilized to study biological molecules in various states. However, the enhancement in SERS is not uniform throughout the spectra. As a result, the strong enhancement of some transitions in SER overshadows weak Raman peaks that are very important to characterize the molecules. Here we show the SERS investigation for whole human blood on a nanostructured ZnO surface. The result indicates that despite the moderate enhancement (20–30 fold), all spectral components of the blood demonstrated in regular Raman are detected in SERS on ZnO. Moreover, SERS on ZnO identifies some components of the blood that are not easily accessible to regular Raman spectroscopy. Data indicate that SERS on ZnO is a valuable tool to investigate the whole blood for diagnosis of various human diseases.