Success?

We can obtain this spectrum pretty consistently.  Oddly enough, we didn’t acidify the MgSO₄ the way Han, et al. describe. We’ll see how this compares to some literature spectra (Hu, et al., Spectrochimica Acta A, vol 51, pgs. 1087-1096, 1995) obtained with borohydride reduced Ag colloids (ours are citrate reduced).

Edit – 6/11/09
It turns out that this is a pretty good spectrum of the plastic microwell plate. Doh!

So How Does This Work?

We are currently trying to replicate experimental results from a paper by Han, Huang, Zhao and Ozaki (Anal. Chem. 81 3329-3333 (2009)). This seemed like a great place to start trying to understand how to consistently obtain SERS spectra of proteins. Naturally, it isn’t as simple as one might think.