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ABSTRACT
Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has undergone an important development over the last few years, particularly in the detection and identification of extremely low traces of explosives. The large number of studies and results generated by this increasing research makes a comprehensive overview necessary. This work reviews in detail that research focused on the identification of explosives by SERS, including TNT, DNT, RDX, PETN, TATP, HMTD, perchlorate, etc. either in bulk state, in solution or in vapor phase. In brief, TNT and DNT have been widely studied by SERS due to its aromatic structure and LODs down to 5–10 zg and 10−17–10−13 M have been achieved. The other explosives have been quite less researched; therefore, few results are available to be compared and a bit more modest LODs have been reached such as 10−13 M for RDX, 10−4 M for TATP, 5 pg for PETN, or 10−9 M for perchlorate. In addition, the challenges of detecting both explosives vapors and perchlorate anion by SERS are thoroughly discussed.