In situ synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in butterfly wings for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)

Abstract

Recently, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been widely studied for chemical and biological sensing. SERS substrates combined with photonic architectures have attracted more and more attention.Photonic architectures in butterfly wings are too complicated to fabricate with either "top-down" or "bottom-up" approaches. Herein, we developed a simple, reproducible, inexpensive and green method to fabricate SERS substrates from different butterfly wings where the component chitosan/chitin was utilized as in situ reducer to synthesize gold nanoparticles in natural 3D photonic architectures. The SERS performances of three butterfly wings are compared. And the results show that a SERS substrate based on M. menelaus is better than the other three substrates, which could detect 10 À9 M 4-ATP and has the lowest RSD and moderate SNR. In situ synthesis of AuNPs in butterfly wings with photonic architectures paves the way for fabricating multiple SERS substrates based on natural materials.

Sensitive Detection of Biomolecules by Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering using Plant Leaves as Natural Substrates

“…The EF values determined for the different substrates are shown in Figure 6. The enhancement factors reported in this work correlate well with the corresponding values reported in literature for similar systems such as butterfly wings, plant leaves, flower petals, and other biological surfaces used for SERS applications [23,25,32]. In addition, the Au deposited fixated leaf substrates had reproducible SERS signals.…”

Building-block design

“…Almost any imaginable reagent has been demonstrated to be suited to produce AuNPs when added to aqueous solutions of tetrachloroaurate(III) in the above described chemical synthesis. Examples of reduction/stabilizing agents in recently published "green" synthesis [14,15] protocols are fruit (banana, [16] pear, [17] citrus fruits), [18] vegetables (cabbage, [19] horse gram), [20] flowers (roses [21] , daisies), [22] plant leaves [23] (almond, [24] mahogany, [25] mango, [26] olive, [27] semecarpus, [28] callistemon, [29] curry tree, [30] memecylon), [31] (culinary) herbs, [32][33][34][35] spices (clove buds, [36] saffron), [37] plant roots (ginseng, [38] ginger), [39] natural gum [40,41] and propolis, [42] bacteria, [43,44] fungi, [45][46][47][48] algae, [49] peptides [50] and proteins and enzymes, [51,52] gripe water, [53] butterfly wings, [54] human skin [55] and hair. [56] The reduction of gold ions to AuNPs also works in aerosols …”

Morpho butterfly-inspired optical diffraction, diffusion, and bio-chemical sensing

“…1,29 Therefore, the bright coloration from blue Morpho buttery wing scales has found advanced applications in displays, self-cleaning surfaces, optical diffusers, ultra-violet sensors, thermal imaging, spectroscopy gas/chemical/vapour sensing, etc. 4,5,[30][31][32][33][34][35] Herein, we report a comprehensive study on the microscopic and optical properties of Morpho peleides buttery wing scales. The optical reection property of the front and back sides of Morpho peleides buttery wing scales were investigated at blue, brown and black regions.…”