scholarly journals Cascaded microsphere-coupled surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (CMS-SERS) for ultrasensitive trace-detection

Nanophotonics ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanlin Mi ◽  
Yinzhou Yan ◽  
Mengyuan Wang ◽  
Lixue Yang ◽  
Jing He ◽  
...  

Abstract Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been widely investigated and employed as a powerful optical analytical technique providing fingerprint vibrational information of molecules with high sensitivity and resolution. In addition to metallic nanostructure, dielectric micro-/nano-structures with extraordinary optical manipulation properties have demonstrated capability in enhanced Raman scattering with ultralow energy losses. Here we report a facile cascaded structure composed of a large microsphere (LMS) and a small microsphere array with Ag nanoparticles as a novel hybrid SERS substrate, for the first time. The cascaded microsphere-coupled SERS substrate provides a platform to increase the molecular concentration, boost the intensity of localized excitation light, and direct the far-field emission, for giant Raman enhancement. It demonstrates the maximum enhancement factor of Raman intensity greater than 108 for the limit of detection down to 10−11 M of 4-nitrothiphenol molecules in aqueous solution. The present work inspires a novel strategy to fabricate cascaded dielectric/metallic micro-/nano-structures superior to traditional SERS substrates towards practical applications in cost-effective and ultrahigh-sensitive trace-detection.

Crystals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Affi Nur Hidayah ◽  
Djoko Triyono ◽  
Yuliati Herbani ◽  
Rosari Saleh

Deltamethrin pesticides can cause inflammation, nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity as well as affect the activity of antioxidant enzymes in tissues. As a result of this concern, there is a rising focus on the development of fast and reliable pesticide residue testing to minimise potential risks to humans. The goal of this study is to use Au-Ag colloid nanoparticles as liquid surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to improve the Raman signal in the detection of deltamethrin pesticide in a brewed tea. The liquid SERS system is fascinating to study due to its ease of use and its unlikeliness to cause several phenomena, such as photo-bleaching, combustion, sublimation and even photo-catalysis, which can interfere with the Raman signal, as shown in the SERS substrate. Our liquid SERS system is simpler than previous liquid SERS systems that have been reported. We performed the detection of pesticide analyte directly on brewed tea, without diluting it with ethanol or centrifuging it. Femtosecond laser-induced photo-reduction was employed to synthesise the liquid SERS of Au, Au-Ag, and Ag colloidal nanoparticles. The SERS was utilised to detect deltamethrin pesticide in brewed tea. The result showed that liquid SERS-based Ag NPs significantly enhance the Raman signal of pesticides compared with liquid SERS-based Au NPs and Au-Ag Nanoalloys. The maximum residue limits (MRLs) in tea in Indonesia are set at 10 ppm. Therefore, this method was also utilised to detect and improve, to 0.01 ppm, the deltamethrin pesticide Limit of Detection (LOD).


Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 2339
Author(s):  
Michele Lemos de Souza ◽  
Juan Carlos Otero ◽  
Isabel López-Tocón

The detection of emerging contaminants in the aquatic environment, such as ibuprofen and caffeine, was studied by means of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) using Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) synthesized with β-cyclodextrin (βCD) as a reducing agent. The effect on the SERS signal of different molar ratios of Ag+/βCD in the synthesis route and the aging process of AgNPs were investigated by using trans-cinnamic as a test molecule. The SERS effectiveness of these β-cyclodextrin colloids (Ag@βCD) was also checked and compared with that of other silver sols usually employed in SERS synthesized by using other reducing agents such as citrate, borohydride and hydroxylamine. All the synthesized SERS substrates were characterized by different techniques. The experimental results indicate that Ag@βCD with the more diluted Ag+/βCD molar ratio showed the best SERS signal, enabling detection at trace concentrations of 0.5 µM in the case of trans-cinnamic acid. The Ag@βCD sols also showed the best sensitivity for detecting ibuprofen and caffeine, reaching the lowest limit of detection (0.1 mM). The proposed synthetic route for Ag@βCD sols provides an improved SERS substrate for detecting organic pollutants with better performance than other standard silver sols.


The Analyst ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harmke Susanna Siebe ◽  
Qinglu Chen ◽  
Xinyuan Li ◽  
Yikai Xu ◽  
Wesley Browne ◽  
...  

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an emerging analytical technique for chemical analysis, due to its combination of short measurement time, high sensitivity and molecular specificity. However, the application of SERS...


Author(s):  
Arpan Dutta ◽  
Tarmo Nuutinen ◽  
Khairul Alam ◽  
Antti Matikainen ◽  
Peng Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Plasmonic nanostructures are widely utilized in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) from ultraviolet to near-infrared applications. Periodic nanoplasmonic systems such as plasmonic gratings are of great interest as SERS-active substrates due to their strong polarization dependence and ease of fabrication. In this work, we modelled a silver grating that manifests a subradiant plasmonic resonance as a dip in its reflectivity with significant near-field enhancement only for transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization of light. We investigated the role of its fill factor, commonly defined as a ratio between the width of the grating groove and the grating period, on the SERS enhancement. We designed multiple gratings having different fill factors using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations to incorporate different degrees of spectral detunings in their reflection dips from our Raman excitation (488 nm). Our numerical studies suggested that by tuning the spectral position of the optical resonance of the grating, via modifying their fill factor, we could optimize the achievable SERS enhancement. Moreover, by changing the polarization of the excitation light from transverse-magnetic to transverse-electric, we can disable the optical resonance of the gratings resulting in negligible SERS performance. To verify this, we fabricated and optically characterized the modelled gratings and ensured the presence of the desired detunings in their optical responses. Our Raman analysis on riboflavin confirmed that the higher overlap between the grating resonance and the intended Raman excitation yields stronger Raman enhancement only for TM polarized light. Our findings provide insight on the development of fabrication-friendly plasmonic gratings for optimal intensification of the Raman signal with an extra degree of control through the polarization of the excitation light. This feature enables studying Raman signal of exactly the same molecules with and without electromagnetic SERS enhancements, just by changing the polarization of the excitation, and thereby permits detailed studies on the selection rules and the chemical enhancements possibly involved in SERS.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Pei ◽  
Yiqun Huang ◽  
Chunying Li ◽  
Yuanyuan Zhang ◽  
Barbara A. Rasco ◽  
...  

Silver-coated gold bimetallic nanoparticles were synthesized and used as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in detecting prohibited triphenylmethane drugs (including crystal violet and malachite green) in fish muscle. The optical properties and physical properties of bimetallic nanospheres were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The optimal nanospheres selected had relatively uniform size (diameter: 33 ± 3 nm) with a silver layer coated on the surface of gold seed (diameter: 18 ± 2 nm). For both crystal violet and malachite green, characteristic SERS spectral features could be identified at concentration as low as 0.1 μg/L with these bimetallic nanospheres. Crystal violet and malachite green residues in fish muscle could also be detected at levels as low as 0.1 ng/g, which could meet the most restricted regulatory requirements for the limit of detection in terms of analytical methods for crystal violet or malachite green in fish muscle. This study provides a basis for applying SERS technology with bimetallic nanoparticles to the identification of trace amounts of prohibited substances in aquatic food products, and the methodology could be extended to analyses of other hazardous chemicals in complex food matrices like vegetables and meats.


2011 ◽  
Vol 78 (6) ◽  
pp. 1930-1935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne L. Hennigan ◽  
Jeremy D. Driskell ◽  
Naola Ferguson-Noel ◽  
Richard A. Dluhy ◽  
Yiping Zhao ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMycoplasma gallisepticumis a bacterial pathogen of poultry that is estimated to cause annual losses exceeding $780 million. The National Poultry Improvement Plan guidelines recommend regular surveillance and intervention strategies to containM. gallisepticuminfections and ensure mycoplasma-free avian stocks, but several factors make detection ofM. gallisepticumand diagnosis ofM. gallisepticuminfection a major challenge. Current techniques are laborious, require special expertise, and are typically plagued by false results. In this study, we describe a novel detection strategy which uses silver nanorod array–surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (NA-SERS) for direct detection of avian mycoplasmas. As a proof of concept for use in avian diagnostics, we used NA-SERS to detect and differentiate multiple strains of avian mycoplasma species, includingAcholeplasma laidlawii,Mycoplasma gallinarum,Mycoplasma gallinaceum,Mycoplasma synoviae, andM. gallisepticum, including vaccine strains 6/85, F, and ts-11. Chemometric multivariate analysis of spectral data was used to classify these species rapidly and accurately, with >93% sensitivity and specificity. Furthermore, NA-SERS had a lower limit of detection that was 100-fold greater than that of standard PCR and comparable to that of real-time quantitative PCR. Detection ofM. gallisepticumin choanal cleft swabs from experimentally infected birds yielded good sensitivity and specificity, suggesting that NA-SERS is applicable for clinical detection.


The Analyst ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 139 (24) ◽  
pp. 6426-6434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelley C. Henderson ◽  
Edward S. Sheppard ◽  
Omar E. Rivera-Betancourt ◽  
Joo-Young Choi ◽  
Richard A. Dluhy ◽  
...  

The detection limits by NA-SERS and qPCR for the bacterial pathogenMycoplasma pneumoniaewere compared.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Awatef Ouhibi ◽  
Maroua Saadaoui ◽  
Nathalie Lorrain ◽  
Mohammed Guendouz ◽  
Noureddine Raouafi ◽  
...  

In this work, we combined a hierarchical nano-array effect of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) with a metallic surface of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to design a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) scattering substrate for sensitive detection of Rhodamine 6G (R6G) which is a typical dye for fluorescence probes. The SiNWs were prepared by Metal-Assisted Chemical Etching (MACE) of n-Si (100) wafers. The Doehlert design methodology was used for planning the experiment and analyzing the experimental results. Thanks to this methodology, the R6G SERS response has been optimized by studying the effects of the silver nitrate concentration, silver nitrate and R6G immersion times and their interactions. The immersion time in R6G solution stands out as the most of influential factor on the SERS response.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Chen ◽  
Ting-Hui Xiao ◽  
Zhenyi Luo ◽  
Yasutaka Kitahama ◽  
Kotaro Hiramatsu ◽  
...  

Abstract Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful tool for vibrational spectroscopy as it provides several orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than inherently weak spontaneous Raman scattering by exciting localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) on metal substrates. However, SERS can be unreliable for biomedical use since it sacrifices reproducibility, uniformity, biocompatibility, and durability due to its strong dependence on “hot spots”, large photothermal heat generation, and easy oxidization. Here, we demonstrate the design, fabrication, and use of a metal-free (i.e., LSPR-free), topologically tailored nanostructure composed of porous carbon nanowires in an array as a SERS substrate to overcome all these problems. Specifically, it offers not only high signal enhancement (~106) due to its strong broadband charge-transfer resonance, but also extraordinarily high reproducibility due to the absence of hot spots, high durability due to no oxidization, and high compatibility to biomolecules due to its fluorescence quenching capability.


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