Herein we utilized coordination interactions to prepare a novel core-shell plasmonic nanosensor for the detection of glucose. Specifically, Au nanoparticles (NPs) were strongly linked with Ag+ ions to form a sacrificial Ag shell by using 4-aminothiophenol (4-PATP) as a mediator, which served as an internal standard to decrease the influence of the surrounding on the detection. The resultant Au-PATP-Ag core-shell systems were characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) techniques. Experiments performed with R6G (rhodamine 6G) and CV (crystal violet) as Raman reporters demonstrated that the Au@Ag nanostructure amplified SERS signals obviously. Subsequently, the Au@Ag NPs were decorated with 4-mercaptophenylboronic acid (4-MPBA) to specifically recognize glucose by esterification, and a detection limit as low as 10-4 M was achieved. Notably, an enhanced linearity for the quantitative detection of glucose (R² = 0.995) was obtained after the normalization of the spectral peaks using 4-PATP as the internal standard. Finally, the practical applicability of the developed sensing platform was demonstrated by the detection of glucose in urine with acceptable specificity.
Keywords: 4-PATP; Au@Ag core-shell nanostructure; glucose; internal standard; surface-enhanced Raman scattering.