Multifold Enhanced Raman Detection of Organic Molecules as Environmental Water Pollutants

Abstract

Organic molecules, including the benzene series, have been identified as pollutants in environmental water. Due to their very low solubility, they have very small concentrations in water, and they are difficult to be detected by conventional techniques. In particular, there is a lack of real-time, accurate, and rapid detection methods for such molecules in water. However, they are detrimental to human health in many aspects. Toluene has been an important indicator of such environmental pollution detections. In this work, we propose a 3D SERS scheme consisting of a hollow fiber that is coated on the inner wall with densely arranged silver nanoparticles, which supplies multifold Raman enhancement by the plasmonic microcavity. Strong confinement of excitation laser energy and strongly enhanced Raman signals with the bidirectional collection are utilized to achieve high-sensitivity detection of toluene molecules in water. Raman signal with a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio has been measured for a concentration of 0.53 mg/L, indicating a detection limit even lower than this value for such a Raman spectroscopic technique. The corresponding enhancement factor is higher than 6 × 103 with respect to the available systems. Thus, this device not only enables direct trace detection and real-time monitoring of the water-polluting status by organic molecules but also supplies a practical approach for biological sensing.