Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy: advancements and applications

Since the mid-1990s, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has advanced greatly and gained wider application and a renewal of interest. There have been several new and creative developments, e.g. SERS of single molecules, nanostructures and transition metals, tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS), surface-enhanced hyper-Raman scattering (SEHRS), ultraviolet-excited SERS (UV-SERS) and surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS), and their wide applications in biology, medicine, materials science and electrochemistry. It is timely to publish a special issue reporting these initiatives and the progress made in the past 7 years. This issue consists of 30 invited articles that are roughly divided into three SERS research themes: theories, methods and applications. These up-to-date representatives of the research results clearly show that SERS is important not only for Raman spectroscopy and surface science but also for nanoscience. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.