SERS based determination of vanillin and its methyl and ethyl derivatives using flower-like silver nanoparticles on a silicon wafer.

A surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) method is described for the determination of vanillin, methyl vanillin and ethyl vanillin at trace levels. Flower-like silver nanoparticles on a silicon wafer are used as the SERS substrate, and the analytes can be specifically and non-destructively recognized by their specific Raman bands. The molecules can be recognized rapidly by identifying the characteristic bands.