Surface-enhanced Raman scattering inspired by programmable nucleic acid isothermal amplification technology

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a mature vibrational spectroscopic technique, and its application in chemical, material, especially life sciences is increasing rapidly. SERS alone cannot meet the demands of current analysis, while the desirable features of nucleic acid isothermal amplification (NAIA) make the simple, economical and flexible SERS become a reality. SERS has been combined with NAIA to provide researchers with more sensitive and precise analysis specifications in biological samples. However, there is no comprehensive review of the SERS analysis combined with NAIA yet. The present review introduces the development of SERS briefly and summarizes the necessary theory for understanding SERS and NAIA. The SERS analyses integrated with NAIA are the centerpiece of this review. They cover a broad range of topics, for example, hybridization chain reaction (HCR), catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA), entropy-driven catalytic reaction (EDR), strand displacement amplification (SDA), recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), exponential amplification reaction (EXPAR), rolling circle amplification (RCA), and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). In the end, the challenges and prospective opinions of the SERS in application are discussed.