Adaptive silver films for bio-array applications

Sensing Proteins With Adaptive Metal Nanostructures

“…X-ray diffraction measurements show AgCl crystals in the transparent areas after silver film treatment with either TBS containing NaCl and KCl or HCl 0.1-1 mM solution. 53 This redox process may affect the interface between the silver particles and the silicon dioxide, decreasing adhesion or even removing particles in solution. Deposition of the protein solution without buffer reveals no visible changes of the film surface in some cases, e.g.…”

“…80 We found recently that vacuum evaporated silver films fabricated at a certain range of evaporation parameters allow fine rearrangement of their local structure under protein deposition. [49][50][51][52][53] Such a substrate, which is referred to as adaptive, provides large SERS enhancement that allows protein sensing at monolayer protein surface density and enables adsorption of proteins without significant changes in their conformational states. This adaptive property appears to be especially important for the sensing of large molecules whose size is comparable with the typical sizes of the metal film nanostructure (particle size, interparticle spacing).…”