Recent developments of functional nanoparticle-decorated electrospun nanofibers have attracted much attention. In this work, plasma treatment was introduced as a simple, efficient, green and versatile method for the fabrication of nanoparticle-decorated electrospun nanofibers. The size of the formed nanoparticles on the nanofibers could be readily tuned by controlling the plasma etching time. Moreover, various nanoparticles could be generated on the nanofibers by mixing different metal salts in the precursor nanofibers. The nanoparticle-decorated nanofibers showed promising surface enhanced Raman scattering properties, and allowed the detection of rhodamine 6 G molecules at concentrations as low as 10(-12) M. (C) 2017 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.