Cost-effective flexible substrate for ultrabroadband SERS

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has made significant progress in recent decades, primarily driven by the principles of plasmon on metal surfaces. In contrast, SERS on non-metal substrates is based on the chemical mechanism involving charge transfer (CT) processes within irradiated molecules and the resonance Raman effect. This plasmon-free SERS mechanism proves highly suitable for detecting biomedical samples, as it suppresses the photo-thermal conversion associated with plasmon. In this study, we developed non-metal SERS substrates using conducting polymer nanofibers through electropolymerization. We evaluated the CT process and performance of the conducting polymer SERS substrates.