TY - JOUR
T1 - Self-assembled nanocube-based plasmene nanosheets as soft surface-enhanced raman scattering substrates toward direct quantitative drug identification on surfaces
AU - Si, Kae Jye
AU - Guo, Pengzhen
AU - Shi, Qianqian
AU - Cheng, Wenlong
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - We report on self-assembled nanocube-based plasmene nanosheets as new surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates toward direct identification of a trace amount of drugs sitting on topologically complex real-world surfaces. The uniform nanocube arrays (superlattices) led to low spatial SERS signal variances ( 2 ). Unlike conventional SERS substrates which are based on rigid nanostructured metals, our plasmene nanosheets are mechanically soft and optically semitransparent, enabling conformal attachment to real-world solid surfaces such as banknotes for direct SERS identification of drugs. Our plasmene nanosheets were able to detect benzocaine overdose down to a parts-per-billion (ppb) level with an excellent linear relationship (R2 > 0.99) between characteristic peak intensity and concentration. On banknote surfaces, a detection limit of 0.9 ? 10-6 g/cm2 benzocaine could be achieved. Furthermore, a few other drugs could also be identified, even in their binary mixtures with our plasmene nanosheets. Our experimental results clearly show that our plasmene sheets represent a new class of unique SERS substrates, potentially serving as a versatile platform for real-world forensic drug identification.
AB - We report on self-assembled nanocube-based plasmene nanosheets as new surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates toward direct identification of a trace amount of drugs sitting on topologically complex real-world surfaces. The uniform nanocube arrays (superlattices) led to low spatial SERS signal variances ( 2 ). Unlike conventional SERS substrates which are based on rigid nanostructured metals, our plasmene nanosheets are mechanically soft and optically semitransparent, enabling conformal attachment to real-world solid surfaces such as banknotes for direct SERS identification of drugs. Our plasmene nanosheets were able to detect benzocaine overdose down to a parts-per-billion (ppb) level with an excellent linear relationship (R2 > 0.99) between characteristic peak intensity and concentration. On banknote surfaces, a detection limit of 0.9 ? 10-6 g/cm2 benzocaine could be achieved. Furthermore, a few other drugs could also be identified, even in their binary mixtures with our plasmene nanosheets. Our experimental results clearly show that our plasmene sheets represent a new class of unique SERS substrates, potentially serving as a versatile platform for real-world forensic drug identification.
UR - http://pubs.acs.org.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.analchem.5b00328
U2 - 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b00328
DO - 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b00328
M3 - Article
VL - 87
SP - 5263
EP - 5269
JO - Analytical Chemistry
JF - Analytical Chemistry
SN - 0003-2700
IS - 10
ER -