Advances of surface-enhanced Raman scattering in gas sensing

Gas detection technology has assumed an increasingly pivotal role within human society, spanning domains from biomedicine to environmental monitoring, food safety, and national defense. Compared with solid and liquid samples, gas molecules at lower concentrations can be difficult recognized and have always been a challenge. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has gained widespread adoption for trace analysis by virtue of their good selectivity, high sensitivity and superior enrichment performance of enhanced substrates, which also has significant advantages in gas detection. However, few works have focused on the critical reviews of this fascinating SERS method applied in the field of gas sensing. It is worth noting that some of the reviews seem to be similar in that they all focus on a specific topic, either on environmental monitoring or related to human health. Thus, in this work, recent advances and future challenges of SERS in gas sensing are firstly and systematically reviewed. The basic principles of SERS and its application in gas sensing were comprehensively summarized. Subsequently, SERS substrates applied in gas sensing, including plasmonic metal nanoparticles (PMNPs), metal oxide semiconductor (MOS), metal-organic framework (MOF), MXene, etc. were systematically reviewed. In addition, the applications of SERS method used in the detection of toxic, hazardous gases and gaseous biomarkers were emphasized, such as environmental monitoring, human health and disease diagnosis, food safety, and national defense security. Finally, this paper also discussed the challenges and perspectives of SERS method, which will provide innovative ideas for design, construction and application of SERS sensors in the gas sensing.