Silver‐bacterial cellulosic sponges as active SERS substrates

Abstract

Synthetic Ag-bacterial cellulose nanocomposites are reported here and their performance as surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates was investigated using thiosalicylic acid and 2,2 -dithiodipyridine as analytes. These nanocomposite materials act as natural sponges when immersed in aqueous or ethanolic solutions allowing capture and SERS detection of certain dissolved molecules. The detection limits for the above organic analytes reached concentrations as low as 10 −4 mol·dm −3 and are considerably lower than the conventional vegetable cellulose analogs. Furthermore, we anticipate that the use of these nanocomposites has a beneficial consequence for the development of handy and active cellulosic SERS substrates, in particular for bioanalysis, as we experimentally demonstrated by testing the amino acids L-phenylalanine, L-glutamin and L-histidine.

Biofunctional Composites of Polysaccharides Containing Inorganic Nanoparticles

“…Gold and silver chitosan and alginate nanocomposites were successfully used as substrates in trace analysis using SERS (Saha et al, 2009;Santos Jr. et al, 2004;Wei et al, 2009). Also cellulose of vegetable and bacterial origin were investigated as matrices to fabricate composites containing Ag nanoparticles that allowed the development of handy and sensitive SERS substrates (Marques et al, 2008). The use of the polysaccharides confers flexibility and portability to the substrate which is essential for extending the applications of this technique.…”

Cellulose/silver nanoparticles composite microspheres: eco-friendly synthesis and catalytic application

“…Ag NPs were synthesized by chemical reduction using of additional reducing reagents (Maneerung et al 2008;Shin et al 2008) or ''greener'' approach through hydrothermal method by using cellulose itself as reductant (Cai et al 2009). The reported cellulose/Ag composites were applied as antimicrobial materials (Sureshkumar et al 2010;Yang et al 2012), SERS substrates (Marques et al 2008), and electrochemical sensor for DNA hybridization (Liu et al 2011). However, to the best of knowledge, the catalytic performance of cellulose/Ag composites has not been reported.…”

“…In addition, cellulose is easily to form porous structure which is able to control the size and shape of Ag NPs in the case of in situ synthesis. In view of the superiority of cellulose as a carrier, plenty of Ag NPs hybrid materials with different styles of cellulose scaffold including fibers (Song et al 2012;Sureshkumar et al 2010), films (Maneerung et al 2008;Marques et al 2008;Yang et al 2012), hydrogels (Cai et al 2009), and nanocrystal (Liu et al 2011;Shin et al 2008) have been prepared. Ag NPs were synthesized by chemical reduction using of additional reducing reagents (Maneerung et al 2008;Shin et al 2008) or ''greener'' approach through hydrothermal method by using cellulose itself as reductant (Cai et al 2009).…”

Recent advances in linear and non‐linear Raman spectroscopy. Part III

“…Enhancement factors of up to 10 13 for 1.09 µm nanotriangles were reported. The SERS activity of metallic silver nanoparticle self-assemblies within thin films was characterised by Whitcomb et al [4] Silver-bacterial cellulosic sponges as active SERS substrates were investigated by Marques et al [5] The authors anticipate that the use of these nanocomposites has a beneficial consequence for the development of convenient, active cellulosic SERS substrates, in particular for bioanalysis. A systematic approach from substrate preparation to map evaluation for the spectral detection and assessment of thin organic layers on metal substrates was reported byČlupek et al [6] Scholes et al [7] have shown that Ag film over nanosphere substrates for SERS is ineffective for the detection of proteins in phosphate buffer solutions because of the decomposition of the substrate resulting in a total loss of SERS activity.…”