Ultrasensitive Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Platform for Protein Detection via Active Delivery to Nanogaps as a Hotspot

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an attractive technique in molecular detection with high sensitivity and label-free characteristics. However, its use in protein detection is limited by the large volume of proteins, hindering its approach to the narrow spaces of hotspots. In this study, we fabricated a Au nanoTriangle plate Array on Gel (AuTAG) as an SERS substrate by attaching a Au nanoTriangle plate (AuNT) arrangement on a thermoresponsive hydrogel surface. The AuTAG acts as an actively tunable plasmonic device, on which the interparticle distance is altered by controlling temperature via changes in hydrogel volume. Further, we designed a Gel Filter Trapping (GFT) method as an active protein delivery strategy based on the characteristics of hydrogels, which can absorb water and separate biopolymers through their three-dimensional (3D) polymer networks. On the AuTAGs, fabricated with AuNTs modified with charged surface ligands to prevent the nonspecific adsorption of analytes to particles, the GFT method helped the delivery of proteins to hotspot areas on the AuNT arrangement. This combination of a AuTAG substrate and the GFT method enables ultrahigh sensitivity for protein detection by SERS up to a single-molecule level as well as a wide quantification concentration range of 6 orders due to their geometric advantages.