Scientists from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a high-throughput biochemical sensor based on porous Au@AuAg nanorods that can detect biochemical molecules with high specificity and sensitivity.
Results were published in Journal of Materials Chemistry C.
The misuse of biochemical molecules can cause significant environmental problems, so the development of low-cost sensors to detect these molecules is essential.
The high-throughput near-infrared surface-enhanced Raman scattering (HNIR-SERS) biochemical sensor is a combination of inkjet printing technology and plasma metal nanoparticles that enables highly-sensitive detection of multiple biochemical molecules in a single substrate.
To this end, the researchers used imprinting technology to fabricate a grid substrate with separated regions arranged in a typical cubic pattern, and then assembled porous Au@AuAg nanorods on the substrate using inkjet printing, resulting in the formation of the sensor.
This novel sensor achieves high sensitivity and specificity in detecting multiple biochemical molecules on a single substrate.
In addition, the researchers demonstrated the effectiveness of the HNIR-SERS sensor by detecting 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP), rhodamine 6G (R6G), methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue (MB) with an enhancement factor of 108 for 4-ATP.
This study provides an effective method for realizing high-throughput and low-cost NIR-SERS sensors and could pave the way for practical applications in Raman detection chips.
Preparation of the HNIR-SERS sensor and SERS spectra of different molecules with same concentration on the HNIR-SERS sensor. (Image by WANG Yifan)
