Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a Raman spectroscopy technique that has been widely used in food safety, environmental monitoring, medical diagnosis and treatment and drug monitoring because of its high selectivity, sensitivity, rapidness, simplicity and specificity in identifying molecular structures. This review introduces the detection mechanism of SERS and summarizes the most recent progress concerning the use of SERS for the detection and characterization of molecules, providing references for the later research of SERS in detection fields.
Keywords: detection; molecules; nanomaterial; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.