Metallic nanoparticles for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies on proteins and pollutants

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a spectroscopic technique that can achieve extremely high sensitivity thanks to the enhancement of the Raman signal of molecules adsorbed on rough metal surfaces or on metallic nanoparticles. The high performances of this technique and the great variety of available nanosubstrates make SERS a very versatile tool to be employed in a large number of applications ranging from chemistry to life sciences, from physics to the environmental field. In my PhD research activity I tested the properties of different metal nanoparticles in order to assess the possibility of their use for practical applications. My work was divided in three main topics: (i) Cytochrome c bioconjugation on gold nanorods, (ii) Silver nanowires for SERS in the NIR region, (iii) In-field detection of pesticide and pollutants.