Mxenes-Au NP Hybrid Plasmonic 2D Microplates in Microfluidics for SERS Detection

Zhaoxian Chen; Anping Liu; Xiumei Zhang; Jiawei Jiao; Yuan Yuan; Yingzhou Huang; Sheng Yan

doi:10.3390/bios12070505

Mxenes-Au NP Hybrid Plasmonic 2D Microplates in Microfluidics for SERS Detection

Biosensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 10;12(7):505. doi: 10.3390/bios12070505.

Authors

Zhaoxian Chen¹, Anping Liu¹, Xiumei Zhang², Jiawei Jiao², Yuan Yuan², Yingzhou Huang³, Sheng Yan⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.
² Chongqing Key Laboratory of Soft Condensed Matter Physics and Smart Materials, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.
⁴ Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.

Abstract

Combined with microfluidics, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) exhibits huge application prospective in sensitive online detection. In current studies, the design and optimization of plasmonic enhanced structures in microfluidics for SERS detection could be an interesting challenge. In this work, hybrid plasmonic 2D microplates composed of Mxenes (Ti₃C₂T_x) microplates and in-situ synthesized Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) are fabricated in a microchannel for enhanced structures in SERS microfluidics. Benefiting from the 2D Mxenes microplates with complex distributions, the enhanced areas generated by Au NPs are quite enlarged in a microchannel, which exhibits high sensitivity in SERS detection at 10^-10 M for Nile blue (NB) molecules in microfluidics. The mechanism of electromagnetic enhancement (EM) and chemical enhancement (CM) is analyzed. The experimental data indicate the ultrasonic times of Mxenes and the concentration of Au³⁺ play important roles in the sensitivity of SERS detection, which is confirmed by the simulated electric field distributions. Furthermore, a typical pesticide (thiram) at 100 ppm in water is detected on these SERS microfluidics with hybrid plasmonic enhanced structures, which demonstrates that our work not only strengthens the knowledge of plasmonics but also enlarges the application of SERS.

Keywords: Mxenes–Au NPs; SERS; hybrid plasmonic 2D microplates; microfluidics.

MeSH terms

Gold* / chemistry
Metal Nanoparticles* / chemistry
Microfluidics
Prospective Studies
Spectrum Analysis, Raman / methods

Substances

Gold

Grants and funding

Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11974067), Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (cstc2019jcyj-bshX0042, cstc2019jcyj-msxmX0828, cstc2019jcyj-msxmX0145), Sharing Fund of Chongqing University’s Large-scale Equipment, Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021A1515110277), and the Shenzhen Natural Science Fund (20200811205344001).