Recent progress and perspective of trace antibiotics detection in aquatic environment by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

The abused antibiotic residue either in natural environment or food is a serious issue for both public health and ecological environment. Therefore, various techniques have been developed for the qualitative and quantitative of trace antibiotics in food, drinking water and human body fluid. Among them, Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a developing technique, which outstands itself with high sensitivity and selectivity. Our presentation takes especially great care to highlight the main progresses and challenges of SERS in the trace antibiotic detection in aquatic, biosystem and food science to illustrate key aspects of this technology. Even though many advances have already been made in this area, there are many hurdles, such as the sensitivity, selectivity, stability and reproducibility, need to be overcome to bring this technology up to the level of the on-site practical application in aquatic environment. This review is written for specialists in the field and a general environment-ecosystem-chemistry readership.