Optical spectroscopy Surface enhanced Raman

This article provides some general remarks on detection requirements for FIA and related techniques and outlines the basic features of the most commonly used detection principles, including optical methods (namely, ultraviolet (UV)-visible spectrophotometry, spectrofluorimetry, chemiluminescence (CL), infrared (IR) spectroscopy, and atomic absorption/emission spectrometry) and electrochemical techniques such as potentiometry, amperometry, voltammetry, and stripping analysis methods. Very few flowing stream applications involve other detection techniques. In this respect, measurement of physical properties such as the refractive index, surface tension, and optical rotation, as well as the a-, //-, or y-emission of radionuclides, should be underlined. Piezoelectric quartz crystal detectors, thermal lens spectroscopy, photoacoustic spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and conductometric detection have also been coupled to flow systems, with notable advantages in terms of automation, precision, and sampling rate in comparison with the manual counterparts. 

Other optical and spectroscopic techniques are also important, including positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy, spectroscopic ellip-sometry, confocal Raman spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy has been made tunable using gold nanorods and strain control on elastomeric PDMS substrates. ... 

Possible applications include optical coatings [98], catalysts [99-101], substrates for Surface Enhanced Raman spectroscopy [102] or biosensor electrodes [103], Mesoporous gold can be prepared by de-aHoying a suitable precursor such as a... 

The broadband analysis was confirmed by the experimental results mentioned in Sect. 5.4.1. This method can also be further enhanced by some of the techniques described in Sects. 5.4.2 and 5.4.3. The conclusion is that these methods of microcavity-enhanced optical absorption sensing provide compact, inexpensive, and sensitive detectors for molecular species in the ambient gas or liquid, and that further increases in sensitivity can be implemented to make them even more competitive. The molecular-transition specificity that is implicit in absorption spectroscopy is a limiting restriction, but the surface-enhanced Raman sensing that is enabled by metallic nanoparticles on the microresonator surface can significantly increase the number of molecular species that could be detected. 

The goal of this chapter will be to provide an overview of the use of planar, optically resonant nanophotonic devices for biomolecular detection. Nanophotonics23 24 represents the fusion of nanotechnology with optics and thus it is proposed that sensors based on this technology can combine the advantages of each as discussed above. Although many of the issues are the same, we focus here on optical resonance rather than plasmonic resonance (such as is used in emerging local SPR and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy-based biosensors). 

Kneipp, K., Kneipp, H., and Kneipp, J., 2006. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering in local optical fields of silver and gold nanoaggregates— From single-molecule Raman spectroscopy to ultrasensitive probing in live cells. Acc. Chem. Res. 39 443-50. 

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy [252], a method based on an array of sensory polymers attached to fibre optics [253], has been used to determine down to 5 ppb and 100 ppb of 2,4-dinitrotoluene in soil. 

Sampling in surface-enhanced Raman and infrared spectroscopy is intimately linked to the optical enhancement induced by arrays and fractals of hot metal particles, primarily of silver and gold. The key to both techniques is preparation of the metal particles either in a suspension or as architectures on the surface of substrates. We will therefore detail the preparation and self-assembly methods used to obtain films, sols, and arrayed architectures coupled with the methods of adsorbing the species of interest on them to obtain optimal enhancement of the Raman and infrared signatures. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been more widely used and studied because of the relative ease of the sampling process and the ready availability of lasers in the visible range of the optical spectrum. Surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy (SEIRA) using attenuated total reflection coupled to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, on the other hand, is an attractive alternative to SERS but has yet to be widely applied in analytical chemistry. 

The extremely small cross sections for conventional Raman scattering, typically 10 111 to 10-25 cm2/molecule has in the past precluded the use of this technique for single-molecule detection and identification. Until recently, optical trace detection with single molecule sensitivity has been achieved mainly using laser-induced fluorescence [14], The fluorescence method provides ultrahigh sensitivity, but the amount of molecular information, particularly at room temperature, is very limited. Therefore, about 50 years after the discovery of the Raman effect, the novel phenomenon of dramatic Raman signal enhancement from molecules assembled on metallic nanostructures, known as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy or SERS, has led to ultrasensitive single-molecule detection. 

Svedberg F, Li ZP, Xu HX, Kail M (2006) Creating hot nanoparticle pairs for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy through optical manipulation. Nano Lett 6(12) 2639-2641... 

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