Novel Liposome-Based Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) Substrate

William Lum, Ian Bruzas, Zohre Gorunmez, Sarah Unser, Thomas Beck, Laura Sagle

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although great strides have been made in recent years toward making highly enhancing surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates, the biological compatibility of such substrates remains a crucial problem. To address this issue, liposome-based SERS substrates have been constructed in which the biological probe molecule is encapsulated inside the aqueous liposome compartment, and metallic elements are assembled using the liposome as a scaffold. Therefore, the probe molecule is not in contact with the metallic surfaces. Herein we report our initial characterization of these novel nanoparticle-on-mirror substrates, both experimentally and theoretically, using finite-difference time-domain calculations. The substrates are shown to be structurally stable to laser irradiation, the liposome compartment does not rise above 45 °C, and they exhibit an analytical enhancement factor of 8 × 106 for crystal violet encapsulated in 38 liposomes sandwiched between a 40 nm planar gold mirror and 80 nm gold colloid.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2639-2646
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Volume8
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 15 2017
Externally publishedYes

Funding

T.B. acknowledges support from NSF grant CHE-1565632.

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