Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) is attractive due to its capability to provide a spectroscopic fingerprint of each type molecule, and provide label-free and rapid on-site detection of different analytes. Although ultrasensitive analysis can be carried out with SERS, in practice, some analytes such as environmental pollutants and food additives always exist in the complex samples at low concentrations, they need to be effectively captured by the SERS substrate and separated from the complex external medium.

In order to enhance the reproducibility of SERS substrate and conquer the complex sample preparation from the complex solution, Prof. YU Xuefeng from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his collaborators successfully fabricate a magnetically controllable and removable SERS substrate using the evaporative self-assembly technique. A superlattice array of gold nanorods doped with magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which is obtained by efficient enrichment and self-assembly of the hybrid nanoparticles and used in SERS detection. The removable plasmonic superlattice array with magnetic properties allows the rapid separation of analytes from the solution and yields excellent sensitivity for environmental pollutants and food additives.

This work has been published as “Efficient Enrichment and Self-Assembly of Hybrid Nanoparticles into Removable and Magnetic SERS Substrates for Sensitive Detection of Environmental Pollutants” in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.6b16141).