Although discovered 40 years ago, the interest in surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for a variety of applications in the fields of material and biomaterial has been revived over the past decade mostly due to a better control over the fabrication methods of nanoscale metallic structures. Metallic structures prepared by bottom-up or top-down methods can be tailored for a variety of applications in order to benefit from the best conditions for surface enhancement. SERS platforms made by nanosphere lithography are for example very versatile platforms that show a detection limit in the femtomolar range. Although quantitative measurements are difficult to perform in Raman spectroscopy, the plasmon-mediated enhancement by the metallic nanostructures are of great interest to improve the detection of analytes traces at surfaces. The extension of SERS to tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) is also very valuable to improve spatial resolution of Raman measurements and to yield surface signals, thus making TERS spectroscopy a surface specific technique. Herein we review SERS and TERS measurements of a model molecule (nitrothiophenol) adsorbed onto gold surfaces.

Date Published: 2 May 2014
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9126, Nanophotonics V, 912610 (2 May 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2054391

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9126:
Nanophotonics V
David L. Andrews; Jean-Michel Nunzi; Andreas Ostendorf, Editor(s)