Progress in multifunctional surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate for detection

In recent years, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has attracted tremendous attention and has been widely used as a powerful analytical tool. Simultaneously, a variety of SERS substrates also have been explored in order to obtain sensitive and reproducible detection. Though researchers have designed and fabricated several SERS-active substrates by employing new technological methods, these substrates have not gotten rid of disadvantages of single-use or single function compared with multifunctional substrates. These limit the development of SERS substrates and promote researchers to prepare new-type multifunctional SERS substrates that not only provide real-time representation of information by monitoring and tracing detection but also have a high sensitivity and reproducibility. This review first reports the applications of multifunctional materials as SERS substrates, which involve a wider range of use in nontraditional but important degradation of organic contaminants, enrichment of target analytes, assembly of nano-materials and imaging of living cells/organisms. We expect this review to be of interest to researchers who could benefit from multifunctional SERS substrates on the basis of the native advantages of unprecedented sensitivity and non-destructive signals of this type of spectroscopy.