Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for trace detection: measurement parameters

In explosives detection, it is essential to detect the smallest traces quickly and reliably directly on site without time-consuming sample preparation. Beside other techniques like rapid testing kits, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a very powerful tool to provide substance specific information. Especially the combination with handheld Raman systems is promising. But these systems have, due to the compact and robust setup, only a very reduced set of hardware. Therefore, the measurement parameters are usually fixed in such devices. In this work the relationships between the measurement parameters for a specific SERS substrate (gold on photo-etched GaN substrate [1]) and the analyte 1,2-bis-(4-pyridyl)-ethylene (BPE) were investigated, to find the optimum parameters of the SERS measurement for trace detection.