Thorlabs Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) Substrate

Thorlabs has released its Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) Substrate, based on the company’s proprietary textured surface technology.

SERS in a non-destructive, highly sensitive technique that can be used to measure ultralow sample concentrations with lower incident power than traditional Raman spectroscopy. The SERS substrate is suitable for many types of sensing applications, including analysis of chemical mixtures, identification of illegal or dangerous substances, quality inspection (pharmaceuticals, food, etc) and monitoring chemical processes at production sites.

The substrate utilises the nanotextured surface of a UV fused silica substrate, with a gold plasmonic layer deposited on top of the texturing, to provide parts per billion sensitivities in biosensing applications. It exhibits high absorption of 785 nm Raman excitation light (greater than 60%) to create large, localised electric field enhancement (~104), which leads to enhanced Raman scattering. Compared to bare glass slides and glass slides coated in a thin layer of gold, the SERS substrate provides clear Raman spectra for low-concentration materials identification.