Recent advances in nanotechnologies combining surface-enhanced Raman scattering and nanopore

Tremendous efforts have been dedicated to detect single-molecule based on nanopore technologies. The electrochemical method is now the most widely-used detection scheme of nanopores. However, this technique suffers from high-frequency electrical noise in the measured ionic current signals and intrinsically weak signal intensity, which induces the inaccuracy of detection. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) combined with nanopore technologies has been monolithically integrated to utilize the merits from both nanopore and Raman spectroscopy. Herein we summarize the recent advances upon the SERS combined nanopore techniques. We first introduce the mechanism of SERS and the fabrications of SERS substrates. Then, we show the fabrications and applications of SERS combined with nanopore technologies. At the end, the perspectives of the SERS combined with nanopore technologies are proposed. We believe that this review will attract more scientists in developing nanopore technologies combining single-molecule detection with SERS.