Ultrabright gap-enhanced Raman tags for high-speed bioimaging.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31467266.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-11829-y and PMC identifier 6715656.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is advantageous over fluorescence for bioimaging due to ultra-narrow linewidth of the fingerprint spectrum and weak photo-bleaching effect. However, the existing SERS imaging speed lags far behind practical needs, mainly limited by Raman signals of SERS nanoprobes. In this work, we report ultrabright gap-enhanced Raman tags (GERTs) with strong electromagnetic hot spots from interior sub-nanometer gaps and external petal-like shell structures, larger immobilization surface area, and Raman cross section of reporter molecules. These GERTs reach a Raman enhancement factor beyond 5 × 10<sup>9</sup> and a detection sensitivity down to a single-nanoparticle level. We use a 370 μW laser to realize high-resolution cell imaging within 6 s and high-contrast (a signal-to-background ratio of 80) wide-area (3.2 × 2.8 cm<sup>2</sup>) sentinel lymph node imaging within 52 s. These nanoprobes offer a potential solution to overcome the current bottleneck in the field of SERS-based bioimaging.
Medical subject headings
- Spectrum Analysis, Raman