Design, Fabrication and Applications of Electrospun Nanofiber-Based Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrate

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an advanced and powerful analysis tool. Due to the advantages of high sensitivity, high resolution, and nondestructive testing, it has been widely used in physics, chemistry, material science and other fields. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in developing flexible platforms for the design and fabrication of SERS substrates. One important kind of the flexible platforms is based on electrospun nanofibers. Electrospun nanofibers not only have unique advantages such as easy preparation, high porosity and large specific surface area, but also can increase the number of hotspots when combined with precious metal nanomaterials, thereby enhancing the SERS signal and expanding the application scope. In this review, we firstly focus on two strategies for the fabrication of metal nanostructure decorated in/on the electrospun nanofibers, namely in-situ and ex-situ. Then the applications of these SERS substrates in the fields of quantitative analysis, monitoring chemical reactions and recyclable detection are introduced in detail. Finally, the challenges as well as perspectives are presented to offer a guideline for the future exploration of these SERS substrates. We expect that it will provide new inspiration for the development of electrospun nanofiber-based SERS substrates.