Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering:  From Noble to Transition Metals and from Rough Surfaces to Ordered Nanostructures

In the mid-1970s, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was discovered which impacted on surface science and spectroscopy because of its extremely high surface sensitivity. However, SERS had not developed as many people had hoped to be a powerful surface diagnostic technique that can be widely used because of some obstacles. For example, only three noble metals Au, Ag, and Cu could provide large enhancement, severely limiting the widespread applications involving other metallic materials of both fundamental and practical importance. In this article, emphasis is put on the recent work of our group to directly generate SERS on net transition metals (e.g., Pt, Ru, Rh, Pd, Fe, Co, Ni, and their alloys) by…