Biomimetic Nano-Pine-Pollen Structure-Based Surface-EnhancedRaman Spectroscopy Sensing Platform for the HypersensitiveDetection of Toxicants: Cadmium and Amyloid

In thefield of surface-enhanced Raman scattering(SERS) sensors, biomimetic micro/nanostructures have beenfabricated to improve sensing performance. In this study, wedeveloped a biomimetic nano-pine-pollen nanostructure (NPP-NS)-based SERS sensing platform that enables the hypersensitivedetection of toxicants, such as toxic heavy metal ions and amyloid-beta oligomers. The secondary gold nanostructures of NPP-NS wereformed on the silver nanostructure through a galvanic replacementreaction, which increased the surface area and created electro-magnetic hotspots, enhancing the SERS responses. Specifically, NPP-NS exhibited the most effective SERS performance with ananalytical enhancement factor of 3.86x10(13). Through experimental analysis and computational simulations, NPP-NS was optimizedas a SERS sensing platform. Additionally, the sensing performance of NPP-NS was consistently highly stable for several days withoutstructural oxidative degradation, despite being in the harsh oxidation state, owing to the secondary gold nanostructure. Moreover, weutilized the NPP-NS SERS sensor for biosensor applications capable of detecting toxicants, such as cadmium ions and amyloid-beta oligomers with a detection limit of up to 10 pM, in drinking water and human plasma samples, respectively. As a pilot study, thebiomimetic NPP-NS could be used as a hypersensitive SERS sensing platform to detect other biological and chemical toxicants.

Automated summary

In this study, a biomimetic nano-pine-pollen nanostructure (NPP-NS)-based SERS sensing platform was developed for the hypersensitive detection of toxicants. The NPP-NS showed effective SERS performance with high stability, and was capable of detecting various toxicants in drinking water and human plasma samples.