Chiral sensing of glucose by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Abstract

Chiral detection of glucose has been investigated with the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of a reporter molecule, phenylalanine (Phe). The chiral-sensitive bimolecular interactions between glucose and Phe strongly perturb the surface adsorption of Phe on gold nanosurfaces via its carboxylate group, and the Raman intensities of the stretching and bending vibrations of carboxylate appear critical to the adsorption changes of Phe. The molecular-level understanding of SERS shows that SERS has great potential for further development of sensitive chiral detection methods for biomolecules.