A  New Kind of SERS Active Substrate Using a Film of Densely Packed Gold Nanoparticles

In the past two decades there has been a developing interest in using surface plasmon resonance materials for biosensors, environmental sensors, and medical devices due to their ability to identify lower concentrations of analytes. Surfaced Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy has been a useful technique to understand the plasmonic behavior of materials. This research team has developed a novel method for fabricating a highly densely packed film of green synthesized gold nanoparticles using UV irradiation with a UV light source at 254nm and 185 nm. Raman spectroscopy was used to characterize the densely packed film, and the surface of the film was functionalized with Rhodamine 6G probe molecules to monitor the SERS activity and identify an enhancement factor. Various proteins were immobilized to the surface of the densely packed gold nanoparticle film, and a SERS measurement was taken to identify the films capability of detecting low concentration of proteins. This experimental data has shown the proof of concept for the development of a cost effective and simple method to fabricate SERS substrates specifically for the development of biosensors for the detection of proteins.