Bioconjugation of SERS nanotags and increasing the reproducibility of results

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a vibrational spectroscopy technique, which is used in the areas of medical diagnostics. This technique use the advantages of biofunctionalized nanoparticles (NPs) for imaging and quantifying of target molecules such as proteins in assays, cells and tissues. The lack of reliability and reproducibility of the results are major challenges in the application of diagnostics based of SERS substrates. The biofunction and success of nanomedical tasks depends on the quality of each involved element like antibodies (IgGs) and nanostructures before, during and after preparation or conjunction with nanoparticles. This short review summarizes current designs of different SERS substrates and highlights the improvement of particularly simple and gentle conjugation methods for targeting research with SERS labels.