Rapid and sensitive surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy method for determination of ketamine in urine

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has gradually proved to be a powerful tool with wide applications in various fields. Here, a simple and rapid SERS method was developed for the determination of ketamine in urine based on silver aggregates as a SERS substrate. Ketamine in urine were demonstrated by the SERS technique with silver sol aggregated by a 0.5 M NaBr solution. The limit of detection for ketamine in urine could be obtained as low as 7.5 ppm, and a linear relationship for ketamine in urine between the Raman intensity and the concentrations was achieved in the range from 7.5 to 150 ppm (R² = 0.977). Additionally, the recovery of this method ranged from 95.7 to 104.9%, which laid a favorable foundation for the rapid and reliable quantitative detection of ketamine in urine. Therefore, this SERS approach with high sensitivity and simplicity has a great prospect for the real-world application of ketamine in urine.