Thiophenol is commonly used as a model system for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of molecules due to the strong affinity of the −SH group toward noble metal surfaces. By performing time-, temperature-, and pH-dependent measurements of thiophenol adsorption on commercial nanostructured gold SERS substrates, we have observed both physisorption and chemisorption processes. These two distinct adsorption regimes were found dependent on the pH which controlled the ionization state of thiophenol in an aqueous medium. At low pH the sulfhydryl proton remains bound, and the kinetic adsorption profile obtained from the SERS intensity follows a sigmoid-shaped curve with an initially slow adsorption rate that deviates from a Langmuir profile. In addition, from temperature-dependent measurements, a near zero value for the activation energy is obtained, indicating that physisorption is the rate-limiting step. At high pH, where the sulfhydryl proton becomes detached, the kinetic adsorption profile follows a classical Langmuir profile, and the activation energy is significantly higher than at low pH, indicating that chemisorption is the rate-limiting step.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can provide rapid fingerprinting of biomaterial in a nondestructive manner. The adsorption of colloidal silver to biological material suppresses native biofluorescence while providing electromagnetic surface enhancement of the normal Raman signal. This work validates the applicability of qualitative SER spectroscopy for analysis of bacterial species by utilizing principal component analysis (PCA) to show discrimination of biological threat simulants, based upon multivariate statistical confidence limits bounding known data clusters. Gram-positive Bacillus spores (Bacillus atrophaeus, Bacillus anthracis, and Bacillus thuringiensis) are investigated along with the Gram-negative bacterium Pantoea agglomerans.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a useful technique for probing analyte-noble metal interactions and determining thermodynamic properties such as their surface reaction equilibrium constants and binding energies. In this study, we measure the binding equilibrium constants and Gibbs free energy of binding for a series of nitrogen-containing aromatic molecules adsorbed on Klarite substrates. A dual Langmuir dependence of the SERS intensity on concentration was observed for the six species studied, indicating the presence of at least two different binding energies. We relate the measured binding energies to the previously described SERS enhancement value (SEV) and show that the SEV is proportional to the traditional SERS enhancement factor G, with a constant of proportionality that is critically dependent on the adsorption equilibrium constant determined from the dual Langmuir isotherm. We believe the approach described is generally applicable to many SERS substrates, both as a prescriptive approach to determining their relative performance and as a probe of the substrate's affinity for a target adsorbate.

A microfluidic device is being developed by University of California-Santa Barbara as part of a joint effort with the United States Army to develop a portable, rapid drug detection device. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is used to provide a sensitive, selective detection technique within the microfluidic platform employing metallic nanoparticles as the SERS medium. Using several illicit drugs as analytes, the work presented here describes the efforts of the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center to optimize the microfluidic platform by investigating the role of nanoparticle material, nanoparticle size, excitation wavelength, and capping agents on the performance, and drug concentration detection limits achievable with Ag and Au nanoparticles that will ultimately be incorporated into the final design. This study is particularly important as it lays out a systematic comparison of limits of detection and potential interferences from working with several nanoparticle capping agents-such as tannate, citrate, and borate-which does not seem to have been done previously as the majority of studies only concentrate on citrate as the capping agent. Morphine, cocaine, and methamphetamine were chosen as test analytes for this study and were observed to have limits of detection (LOD) in the range of (1.5-4.7) × 10 M (4.5-13 ng/mL), with the borate capping agent having the best performance.

Resonance Raman cross sections of common explosives have been measured by use of excitation wavelengths in the deep-UV from 229 to 262 nm. These measurements were performed both in solution and in the native solid state for comparison. While measurements of UV Raman cross sections in solution with an internal standard are straightforward and commonly found in the literature, measurements on the solid phase are rare. This is due to the difficulty in preparing a solid sample in which the molecules of the internal standard and absorbing analyte/explosive experience the same laser intensity. This requires producing solid samples that are mixtures of strongly absorbing explosives and an internal standard transparent at the UV wavelengths used. For the solid-state measurements, it is necessary to use nanostructured mixtures of the explosive and the internal standard in order to avoid this bias due to the strong UV absorption of the explosive. In this study we used a facile spray-drying technique where the analyte of interest was codeposited with the nonresonant standard onto an aluminum-coated microscope slide. The generated resonance enhancement profiles and quantitative UV-vis absorption spectra were then used to plot the relative Raman return as a function of excitation wavelength and particle size.