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Interestingly, Alex, there is a lot of work going on right now on the
microscopy version of SERS called TERS (tip enhanced Raman
Spectroscopy). Combining SERS on the tip of an AFM probe with the
ability to simultaneously image is really powerful. I wrote an
article last year for American Lab on a hybrid instrument developed
jointly by Horiba (leader in Raman) and AIST-NT (an industry leader
in AFM. There's a PDF in our library at MicroscopyEducation.com:
http://microscopyeducation.com/the-library/There is also a lot of interest in SERS slides themselves. Substrates
are becoming more regular, longer lived, and more dependendable. i
recommend just Googliing them.
While it didn't come up on my Google, search, I saw Biotool's RIM
slides several weeks ago at PITTCON. BioTools has extensive
experience specifically in biologics and related bioanalytical area
to which you alluded in your question. Here's the URL for the RIM
slides:
http://www.btools.com/u-rim.htmlThis concept is an interesting one. No matter whether TERS or SERS,
it involves a surface onto which are deposited nano particles
(typically gold, but it can be silver, copper, etc) which can, within
a few 10s of nanometers from the surface, act like antennae to boost
the Raman signal coming from that surface. Under the right
conditions (and that's the hard part!), it can result in signals that
are amplified a million fold. This amplification is important either
because the Raman signal itself is weak and/or because of competition
from fluorescence.
There are strong parallels between the Raman/fluorescence competition
and the fluorescence/reflected light competition, which confocal
microscopists understand all too well. For example, the grass and
leaves are always fluorescing red (from the chlorophyll), but we
never see that because of the competition with reflected green light.
(For those of you who haven't tried this experiment, go find a leaf
and put it under your microscope using excitation somewhere in the
green). Reflected light is often 1000-10,000x brighter than the
related fluorescence. Similarly, fluorescence is about 10,000x
brighter than the Raman signal from the similar material.
Caveat: No commercial interest in any of the products mentioned here.
Good Hunting!
Barbara Foster, President & Chief Consultant
Microscopy/Microscopy Education ... "Education, not JustTraining"
7101 Royal Glen Trail, Suite A - McKinney, TX 75070
P: 972-924-5310 W: www.MicroscopyEducation.com
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microscopists! Now scheduling courses through the 2017. We can
customize a course on nearly any topic, from fluorescence to confocal
to image analysis to SEM/TEM. Call for details
At 11:19 AM 3/26/2017, you wrote:
>*****
>To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy>Post images on
http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
>*****
>
>If anyone is familiar with SERS, could you share which groups doing
>great SERS research these days ? for bioanalytical applications.
>Thank you in advance.
>
>Alex
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