Adaptive silver films for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of biomolecules

The interaction of biological molecules with a typical substrate for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) often leads to their structural and functional changes. In this paper we describe SERS substrates, called adaptive silver films (ASFs), in which the biomaterial and the substrate act in concert to produce excellent Raman enhancement through local restructuring of the metal surface while at the same time preserving the properties (such as conformational state and binding activity) of the analyte. These adaptive substrates show great promise for SERS spectroscopy of many different types of biomolecules, and we provide several current examples of their use. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.