Solid-State Au Nanocone Arrays Substrate for Reliable SERS Profiling of Serum for Disease Diagnosis

Yanyan Lu; Biao Lei; Qian Zhao; Xiaowei Yang; Yi Wei; Tingting Xiao; Shuyi Zhu; Yu Ouyang; Hongwen Zhang; Weiping Cai

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c04910

Solid-State Au Nanocone Arrays Substrate for Reliable SERS Profiling of Serum for Disease Diagnosis

ACS Omega. 2023 Aug 3;8(32):29836-29846. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c04910. eCollection 2023 Aug 15.

Authors

Yanyan Lu^{1

2}, Biao Lei^{1

2}, Qian Zhao¹, Xiaowei Yang^{1

2}, Yi Wei¹, Tingting Xiao¹, Shuyi Zhu^{1

2}, Yu Ouyang³, Hongwen Zhang^{1

4}, Weiping Cai^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, P. R. China.
² University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China.
³ Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Affiliated Taizhou Second People's Hospital of Yangzhou University, Taizhou 225300, P. R. China.
⁴ Lu'an Branch, Anhui Institute of Innovation for Industrial Technology, Lu'an 237100, P. R. China.

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a widely used rapid and noninvasive method for detecting biological substances in serum samples and is commonly employed in disease screening and diagnosis. Solid-state nanoarray SERS substrates used in serum detection may cause spectral instability due to imperfections in the detection method. For the purpose of identifying optimal detection conditions, various dilution levels of the serum were tested in this study. The study found that a complete and stable serum SERS spectrum can be obtained when the serum is diluted by a factor of 50. The study reports the successful preparation of an Au nanocone array (Au NCA) plasmonic substrate with a uniform, controllable microstructure and high activity, achieved through a combination of PS colloidal sphere template-assisted reactive ion etching (RIE) process and magnetron sputtering deposition technology. Based on this substrate, a standard detection scheme was developed to obtain highly stable and repeatable serum SERS spectra. The study verified the reliability of the optimized serum detection scheme by comparing the SERS spectra of serum samples from healthy individuals and gastric cancer patients, and confirmed the potential benefits of the scheme for disease screening and diagnosis.