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Raman spectroscopy on transition metals

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Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has developed into one of the most important tools in analytical and surface sciences since its discovery in the mid-1970s. Recent work on the SERS of transition metals concluded that transition metals, other than Cu, Ag, and Au, can also generate surface enhancement as high as 4 orders of magnitude. The present article gives an overview of recent progresses in the field of Raman spectroscopy on transition metals, including experimental, theory, and applications. Experimental considerations of how to optimize the experimental conditions and calculate the surface enhancement factor are discussed first, followed by a very brief introduction of preparation of SERS-active transition metal substrates, including massive transition metal surfaces, aluminum-supported transition metal electrodes, and pure transition metal nanoparticle assembled electrodes. The advantages of using SERS in investigating surface bonding and reaction are illustrated for the adsorption and reaction of benzene on Pt and Rh electrodes. The electromagnetic enhancement, mainly lightning-rod effect, plays an essential role in the SERS of transition metals, and that the charge-transfer effect is also operative in some specific metal–molecule systems. An outlook for the field of Raman spectroscopy of transition metals is given in the last section, including the preparation of well-ordered or well-defined nanostructures, and core-shell nanoparticles for investigating species with extremely weak SERS signals, as well as some new emerging techniques, including tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and an in situ measuring technique.

Electric-field enhancement of a SERS-active Rh surface decorated with small nanohemispheres

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Acknowledgements

The present work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (20473067, 20673086, 20433040, 20021002, 20228020), Ministry of Education of China (20040384010, NCET-05-0564) and Fok Ying Tung Foundation (101015).

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  1. Guo-Kun Liu

    Present address: State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

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  1. State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces and Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Bin Ren, Guo-Kun Liu, Xiao-Bing Lian & Zhong-Qun Tian

  2. Department of Physics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Zhi-Lin Yang

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Ren, B., Liu, GK., Lian, XB. et al. Raman spectroscopy on transition metals. Anal Bioanal Chem 388, 29–45 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-007-1141-2

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