SERS-activated platforms for chemical contaminants in food: Probes, encoding methods, and detection

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has been proven to be an extremely efficient, reliable, and influential technique to monitor or determine various pollutants in food. It has various advantages, including simplicity, sensitivity, speed, and the ability to create distinguishable analyte fingerprints with minimal interference from water. The goal of this review was to evaluate the SERS-based sensor's progress in detecting and monitoring chemical pollutants in food. Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in the analysis of chemical contaminants, particularly pesticides, heavy metals, and mycotoxins. Several factors leading to improved SERS performance, such as SERS substrate, Raman reporter molecules, antibody, aptamer, lab-on-a-chip, molecularly imprinted polymers, as well as SERS tag techniques such as immunochromatographic assay, colorimetry, and imaging, are briefly discussed. The paper also summarized the theory and application of SERS-based label-free sensors and also emphasized the progress in applying mathematical models to SERS analysis of chemical contaminants.