Recent Progress on Solid Substrates for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Analysis

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful vibrational spectroscopy technique with distinguished features of non-destructivity, ultra-sensitivity, rapidity, and fingerprint characteristics for analysis and sensors. The SERS signals are mainly dependent on the engineering of high-quality substrates. Recently, solid SERS substrates with diverse forms have been attracting increasing attention due to their promising features, including dense hot spot, high stability, controllable morphology, and convenient portability. Here, we comprehensively review the recent advances made in the field of solid SERS substrates, including their common fabrication methods, basic categories, main features, and representative applications, respectively. Firstly, the main categories of solid SERS substrates, mainly including membrane substrate, self-assembled substrate, chip substrate, magnetic solid substrate, and other solid substrate, are introduced in detail, as well as corresponding construction strategies and main features. Secondly, the typical applications of solid SERS substrates in bio-analysis, food safety analysis, environment analysis, and other analyses are briefly reviewed. Finally, the challenges and perspectives of solid SERS substrates, including analytical performance improvement and largescale production level enhancement, are proposed.

Raman Spectroscopy-Based Chemometrics for Pesticide Residue Detection: Current Approaches and Future Challenges

“…However, conventional colloidal-based SERS substrates are not found to be ideal due to the different stages and efforts required to concentrate and aggregate the deposited nanoparticles on the solid surface substrate. Consequently, solid SERS substrates (paper membrane, silicone, polymer, glass, chip, or fiber-based) with advantages including dense hot spot, stability, desired morphology, and portability have been developed . For example, a filter paper-based nanoparticle substrate was employed to detect pesticides in a portable background, i.e., aqueous and solids, and was found to be cost-effective, reproducible, and sensitive …”

“…Consequently, solid SERS substrates (paper membrane, silicone, polymer, glass, chip, or fiber-based) with advantages including dense hot spot, stability, desired morphology, and portability have been developed. 31 For example, a filter paper-based nanoparticle substrate was employed to detect pesticides in a portable background, i.e., aqueous and solids, and was found to be cost-effective, reproducible, and sensitive. 32 2.3.2.…”

SERS-Based Optical Nanobiosensors for the Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease

“…The preparation of nanocolloid substrates is much simpler with respect to the solid SERS substrate, with the ability to ignore the interference of water signals and inhomogeneous signals captured from SERS measurement using SERS substrate. However, liquid substrates have many limitations, including difficult long-term storage because of the easy aggregation of nanoparticle colloids, lower SERS activity, and unstable signals in terms of the inherent instability of nanoparticles [ 47 ]. According to the report, non-aggregated colloidal substrate only reaches the 10 4 –10 5 order of magnitude of the SERS analytical enhancement factor (AEF) [ 48 ].…”

Simulating Detection of Dioxin-like Pollutants with 2D Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy using h-BNC Substrates

“…Therefore, SERS technique has been pointed out as one of the most promising alternatives for POPs detection [28,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], mainly due to the very low detection limits obtained [45], limits unreachable with traditional detection procedures based on bioassays or chromatography techniques. Another advantage of spectroscopic techniques in general and SERS in particular is the lower costs compared to bioassays and gas chromatography [15]; costs that have been reduced gradually by improving the fabrication techniques of SERS substrates or replacing the traditional gold and silver nanoparticles by less expensive nanostructured materials [55][56][57][58][59].…”