Reproducibility in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an intense ongoing hot topic because it is an attractive tool for sensing or detecting molecules in trace amounts. Despite its high specificity and sensitivity, the SERS technique has not been established as a routine analytic method most likely due to the low reproducibility of the SERS signal. This review considers the influence factors to produce the poor reproducibility during the SERS measurement. This review starts with the discussion of calculation of surface-enhanced Raman intensity in order to explain the reason why it is so difficult to achieve a high reproducibility of SERS measurement from the origin of enhancement mechanism. Then we focus on the fabrication of SERS substrates generally including two types: ➀ single particles and ➁ arrays on substrate that are directly used to detect molecules or other components. In addition, we discuss the molecule factors and optical system for the reproducibility for sample-to-sample or spot-to-spot on a substrate. In the final part of this review, some effects resulting in the irreproducibility of Raman bands’ position from recent literatures are discussed.