The SERS effect was discovered in Southampton in the 1970s and recently revitalised here by the team of Bartlett, Baumberg and myself.
We have developed a novel architecture as the SERS active substrate, based on electrodeposition through a colloidal crystal template to yield a sphere segment void structure, that is much more reproducible and tunable than the traditional roughened surfaces. My group is currently exploring the use of these substrates to characterise adsorbates and the metal/solution interface in ionic liquids and other non-aqueous solvents