(A) surface attachable substrate for surface-enhanced raman scattering

Abstract

Food safety and virus inspection attract public attention since food is shared and people travel all over the world. Raman scattering is a candidate for detecting various types of harmful molecules since it is powerful tool to get a structural information of target molecules. However, Raman scattering has low effi-ciency owing to its inelastic scattering process. To overcome this limitation, surface-enhanced Raman spec-troscopy (SERS) has been developed since the 1970s. A sensitivity and a reproducibility of SERS have been intensively studied with the aid of improvement of a SERS substrate. Although using a SERS substrate makes a sensitivity enormously large but also makes analytical process complicated. Therefore, to optimize an ana-lytical process of SERS, directly obtaining a Raman spectrum on a surface containing target molecules is essential. Furthermore, direct analysis can extend SERS applications into ordinary life with a portable Raman spectrometer. Here, novel structure of a SERS substrate was proposed to detect the target molecule directly on the surface. It is flexible, free-standing and transparent with having a metallic nano-structure. Therefore it is attached to any surface and real-time detection directly on the target surface is possible. It is named Sticker type SERS (S-SERS) substrate since it is able to be detached from the surface. Raman intensity of BCB, par-athion, E.coli was enhanced by S-SERS substrate. In situ inspection of BCB concentration was also demonstrated.