Explosive detection by Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering

The Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has demonstrated its high efficiency to increase the Raman signal of chemical and biological species and to be able to observe and identify a very low quantity of molecules paving the way to the single molecule sensitivity. Its application to molecular detection is now intensively developed to set-up various kind of highly sensitive sensors. In this paper, we propose a review on the SERS technique and on its use as sensor for the detection of explosives, since it is of first importance in the framework of public safety. After a description of the SERS principle, we report on the different methods developed for such detection (substrates, detection principles…) and on the results obtained (targeted analytes, sensitivity, limit of detection…). We discuss all these results and compared them with other current analytical methods.