Research Progress on Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrates for Detection of Impurities in Milk

Milk safety problems occur frequently, in order to assure the food safety and avoid health risks to consumers, rapid and non-invasive analytical procedures need to be proposed for detection of dairy industry. Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) is a fast and sensitive molecular fingerprint technology. Because of its easy operation, non-invasive, fast and unaffected by water, it is widely used in the detection of dairy products. The stability and reproducibility of SERS signals mainly depend on the preparation of SERS substrates. This article reviews the preparation methods of SERS substrates in milk testing in recent years, the most study of SERS substrate materials are high-cost precious metal materials, which leads to some limitations in the application of precious metal substrates. Therefore, SERS substrates of new materials are one of the prospects of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy research. In addition, the currently reported SERS substrates used in milk detection are only part of the many pollutants in milk, adulterants such as formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, dichromic acid and salicylic acid have not been reported.