Nanostructured silver materials for noninvasive medical diagnostics by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Noninvasive medical diagnostics as a modern research and application trend faces with a key problem of successive development of novel materials. Recently, new powerful approaches based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy have become incredibly popular since they promise a unique analysis of biochemical processes on cell, cell organelle and molecular levels. Silver nanostructures and composites are preferred for such an analysis because of easier and more flexible preparation ways, better affinity to biological species, extraordinary spectral sensitivity and a wide variety of morphological forms of silver nanomaterials.