Towards practical and sustainable SERS: a review of recent developments in the construction of multifunctional enhancing substrates

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful analytical technique, which allows quantitative detection of chemical species with molecular specificity and single-molecule sensitivity. These useful properties can be further combined with portable Raman spectrometers which allow SERS to be...

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Published inJournal of materials chemistry. C, Materials for optical and electronic devices Vol. 9; no. 35; pp. 11517 - 11552
Main Authors Li, Chunchun, Huang, Yiming, Li, Xinyuan, Zhang, Yingrui, Chen, Qinglu, Ye, Ziwei, Alqarni, Zarah, Bell, Steven E. J, Xu, Yikai
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Royal Society of Chemistry 21.09.2021
Subjects
Chemical analysis
Gold
Raman spectroscopy
Regeneration
Silver
Smart sensors
Spectrometers
Substrates
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Summary:Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful analytical technique, which allows quantitative detection of chemical species with molecular specificity and single-molecule sensitivity. These useful properties can be further combined with portable Raman spectrometers which allow SERS to be potentially employed at the point-of-care. As a result, SERS has found a wide range of potential applications in both real-life chemical analysis and fundamental mechanistic studies. Despite these advantages, true applications of SERS have been limited due to its high cost, which arises mainly from the fact that SERS relies on expensive single-use Ag/Au enhancing substrates suitable only for the analysis of pure samples. A viable approach to address this issue is to develop multifunctional SERS substrates, which in addition to providing Raman signal enhancement, is armed with other practical functionalities that simplifies the analysis and/or allows the substrate to be regenerated for repeated use. This review gives an account of the recent progress in the fabrication of multi-functional SERS substrates, namely flexible, separation-enhancement-in-one, calibration-enhancement-in-one and regeneration-enhancement-in-one substrates. Specific focus is placed on summarizing and discussing the most widely used strategies to incorporate each type of functionality and their respective advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we present our perspectives on the future challenges and potential opportunities in the development of smart multifunctional SERS sensors for achieving sustainable and wide-spread application of SERS. Here, we review the state-of-the-art progress in the construction of smart multifunctional enhancing substrates. These substrates hold the key to achieving sustainability and widespread applications of SERS.
Bibliography:Yiming Huang obtained her MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Analysis at Queen's University Belfast in 2019. She turned to study in chemistry as a PhD student under Prof Steven E. J. Bell at Queen's University Belfast. Her current research focuses on understanding colloidal metal nanoparticles stability and molecular adsorption on noble metal nanomaterial surfaces, as well as their applications in medicine and biology.
Chunchun Li obtained her BSc in 2017 from East China University of Science and Technology in Applied Chemistry. Currently, she is a PhD student in chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Steven E. J. Bell at Queen's University Belfast. Her research focuses on understanding molecular adsorption and related phenomenon on noble metal nanomaterial surfaces via SE(R)RS for the construction of nanomaterials with tailored surface properties.
Dr Yikai Xu is currently an independent Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen's University Belfast. He obtained his BSc degree in Applied Chemistry at East China University of Science and Technology and completed his PhD research at QUB. Dr Xu is the recipient of the 2019 Kathleen Lonsdale Royal Irish Academy Prize for the most outstanding PhD research in chemical science in Ireland. His research interests are in the preparation and applications of plasmonic nanomaterials, particularly the preparation of hybrid materials containing plasmonic nanoparticle assemblies.
Prof. Steven E. J. Bell received his PhD from Queen's University Belfast and worked at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory and the University of York before returning to QUB where he is a Professor of Physical Chemistry and Head of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. His research centres on nanomaterials and Raman spectroscopy. He has a particular interest in the application of Raman methods to real world problems including medical and security applications and was founder/director of a successful company manufacturing Raman spectrometers.
ISSN:2050-7526
2050-7534
DOI:10.1039/d1tc02134f