Sultan Ben Jaber and Ivan P Pa
Abstract
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is sensitive analytical technique for detection of organic molecules. A wide range of nanostructure substrates were used as SERS substrate for explosive detection that gave various efficiencies. In this work, gold and silver nanoparticles (spheres) were used to evaluate the enhancement of Raman signals of the most widely used explosives 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) and Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). SERS studies were carried out using three concentrations of explosives 10-5, 10-7 and 10-9 M to determine the limit of detection. The enhancement factor was estimated as ≈ 104 for 10-5 M samples and ≈ 106 for 10-7 M samples.