Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is advantageous over fluorescence for bioimaging due to ultra-narrow linewidth of the fingerprint spectrum and weak photo-bleaching effect. However, the existing SERS imaging speed lags far behind practical needs, mainly limited by Raman signals of SERS nanoprobes. In this work, we report ultrabright gap-enhanced Raman tags (GERTs) with strong electromagnetic hot spots from interior sub-nanometer gaps and external petal-like shell structures, larger immobilization surface area, and Raman cross section of reporter molecules. These GERTs reach a Raman enhancement factor beyond 5 × 109 and a detection sensitivity down to a single-nanoparticle level. We use a 370 μW laser to realize high-resolution cell imaging within 6 s and high-contrast (a signal-to-background ratio of 80) wide-area (3.2 × 2.8 cm2) sentinel lymph node imaging within 52 s. These nanoprobes offer a potential solution to overcome the current bottleneck in the field of SERS-based bioimaging.

Details

Title
Ultrabright gap-enhanced Raman tags for high-speed bioimaging
Author
Zhang, Yuqing 1 ; Gu, Yuqing 2 ; He, Jing 2 ; Thackray, Benjamin D 2 ; Ye, Jian 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P. R. China; School of Automation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, P. R. China 
2  State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P. R. China 
3  State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P. R. China; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Gynecologic Oncology, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Department of Nuclear Medicine, Ruijin Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China 
Pages
1-12
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Aug 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11829-y
ProQuest document ID
2282434221
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.