Volume‐Enhanced Raman Scattering Detection of Viruses

Abstract

Virus detection and analysis are of critical importance in biological fields and medicine. Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has shown great promise in small molecule and even single molecule detection, and can provide fingerprint signals of molecules. Despite the powerful detection capabilities of SERS, the size discrepancy between the SERS “hot spots” (generally, <10 nm) and viruses (usually, sub‐100 nm) yields poor detection reliability of viruses. Inspired by the concept of molecular imprinting, a volume‐enhanced Raman scattering (VERS) substrate composed of hollow nanocones at the bottom of microbowls (HNCMB) is developed. The hollow nanocones of the resulting VERS substrates serve a twofold purpose: 1) extending the region of Raman signal enhancement from the nanocone surface (e.g., surface “hot spots”) to the hollow area within the cone (e.g., volume “hot spots”)—a novel method of Raman signal enhancement, and 2) directing analyte such as viruses of a wide range of sizes to those VERS “hot spots” while simultaneously increasing the surface area contributing to SERS. Using HNCMB VERS substrates, greatly improved Raman signals of single viruses are demonstrated, an achievement with important implications in disease diagnostics and monitoring, biomedical fields, as well as in clinical treatment.

Assembly of gold nanoparticles using turnip yellow mosaic virus as an in-solution SERS sensor

“…The Raman bands of the proteins or RNA are not observed, probably because the virus is too large to be adsorbed at the hot spots of our system even at high concentration. 53 This could explain that the Raman spectrum of AuNP graed onto TYMV (with an estimated concentration of TYMV of 1 mg mL À1 ) is identical to two previous spectra (Fig. S7 †).…”

Interfacial Capillary‐Force‐Driven Self‐Assembly of Monolayer Colloidal Crystals for Supersensitive Plasmonic Sensors

“…An ideal plasmonic material for next‐generation plasmonic devices would be easy to fabrication, functionalization, and continuously tunable . Monolayer colloidal crystals (MCCs), which are ordered arrays of nanoscale silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ), polystyrene (PS), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), Au/Ag particles, could meet all these properties . Among them, stimulated by the great developments in colloidal self‐assembly technology, there are growing efforts in fabricating 2D plasmonic periodic arrays with PS MCCs for the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP)s to achieve idea sensing performance .…”

Label-free highly sensitive probe detection with novel hierarchical SERS substrates fabricated by nanoindentation and chemical reaction methods

“…Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has triggered significant research interest due to its suitability as an analytical tool for the ultrasensitive detection of molecules [1][2][3][4]. Compared with traditional Raman scattering technology, SERS is a surface phenomenon associated with the amplification of Raman intensity by several orders of magnitude for analyte molecules.…”