Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic study of DNA and 6-mercapto-1-hexanol interactions using large area mapping

The emergence of 2D SERS substrates with large areas of hot spots has enabled data to be gathered at large scale. This work presents a statistical tool for analysing large amounts of SERS data by utilizing a peak-fitting model in a specific spectral range. By analysing the distributions of Raman intensities and peak positions it is possible to directly inspect the interplay between DNA and 6-mercapto-1-hexanol on gold covered nanopillars. It is demonstrated that optimised functionalization parameters can be extracted from the Raman spectra directly. Using the peak-fitting approach it is possible to avoid miss-interpretation of intensity histograms, where contamination might contribute with an enhanced background and not a peak.