Raman to the limit: tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopic investigations of a single tobacco mosaic virus

The development of fast identification techniques of viruses is an ongoing important research topic. Conventional virus detection and identification is generally based on various different microbiological methods. However, these techniques are not suitable for the analysis of single virus particles. Therefore, our goal is to establish tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS), providing vibrational spectroscopic information with a spatial resolution less than 50 nm, to characterize single viruses at a molecular level. Here we report, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, about TIERS spectra of a tobacco mosaic virus, showing the great capability of this technique. However, the application of the TIERS technique for a rapid and direct detection of different species of single viruses is under development, which is useful for a wide range of analytical fields. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.