Application advances of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy in food detection

Food contamination is an important issue that endangers public health and safety. Exploring sensitive, rapid and simple technologies to detect contaminants at trace level is of great significance for ensuring food quality safety and risk assessment. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) utilizes plasmonic nanomaterials to generate a strong surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect in the visible to near-infrared region, such as silver and gold nanostructures. The SPR effect can significantly enhance the Raman signals of adsorbed molecules on the surface of nanostructures, allowing to gain the sensitive fingerprint information for the analyte itself or the Raman reporter. This technology has the advantages of high sensitivity, fast response, small water interference and non-invasive, etc., and has been widely used in the field of food detection. This article reviews the application and research progress of SERS technology in the detection of agricultural and veterinary drug residues, toxins and food-borne pathogens in the recent five years, and prospects its future development trend. © 2022, Youke Publishing Co.,Ltd. All rights reserved.