Flexible, stable and sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering of graphite/titanium-cotton substrate for conformal rapid food safety detection

Fabricating flexible, stable and highly reproducible surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active substrates is very important in furthering the development of practical SERS sensors. Nevertheless, the fabrication of such SERS substrates is rather challenging in processing conditions for both noble metal and semiconductor substrates. In this study, highly sensitive SERS detection is achieved by fabricating novel textile-based SERS substrates with a structure of graphite/titanium/cotton which are prepared by sputtering cotton fabric with titanium and graphite for different lengths of time at room temperature. The resultant samples show excellent SERS with an enhancement factor of 1.6 × 104, limit of detection of 4 × 10−7 as well as outstanding flexibility. The optimal SERS active substrate in this study also shows promising application for conformal rapid detection in the field of food safety testing.