Anomalous Raman bands appearing in surface-enhanced Raman spectra

✍ Scribed by S. Sánchez-Cortés; J. V. García-Ramos

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 258 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0377-0486
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4555(199805)29:5<365::aid-jrs247>3.0.co;2-y

✦ Synopsis

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a very sensitive technique which has been extensively employed in the study of a wide range of molecules, but an accurate interpretation of SER spectra is sometimes missing. Bands which do not correspond to the molecule under study and that can be attributed to other molecular species or ions also existing in the sample can often appear in SER spectra, even if they are present at a much lower concentration, due to resonant selective enhancement. In this work the more common anomalous bands which had been observed in SER spectra when using silver colloids obtained by chemical reduction were studied. It was noted that similar bands have been obtained by other workers when using both colloids and electrodes, although they were often attributed to the adsorbate under study. This paper is intended to warn SERS users about their interpretation of SER spectra when obtaining these anomalous bands. In addition, some methods for eliminating these anomalous bands from the SER spectra are proposed.