Time fluctuations and imaging in the SERS spectra of fungal hypha grown on nanostructured substrates

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy is an emerging technique in biomolecular analysis that can have a tremendous impact in the life sciences. We report on the SERS imaging of fungal hyphae grown on narrostructured SERS active substrates engineered using semiconductor technologies. Time fluctuations in the intensity and band position in the SERS spectra measured on the same sample position with 1 s integration time have been observed indicating that the SERS signal arises from a limited number of molecules and that possibly single components are being detected.