Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful tool for vibrational spectroscopy, but its reliability in biomedical applications is hampered by reproducibility, uniformity, biocompatibility, and durability issues. This article demonstrates a metal-free, topologically tailored nanostructure—a porous carbon nanowire array (PCNA)—as a SERS substrate to overcome these problems. The PCNA offers high signal enhancement (~10⁶) due to broadband charge-transfer resonance, high reproducibility due to the absence of hot spots, high durability due to no oxidation, and high biocompatibility due to fluorescence quenching. Experiments with various molecules confirm its excellent properties, making it highly reliable for practical use in various fields.

Nan Chen, Ting-Hui Xiao, Zhenyi Luo, Yasutaka Kitahama, Kotaro Hiramatsu, Naoki Kishimoto, Tamitake Itoh, Zhenzhou Cheng, Keisuke Goda