Mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods: towards sensitive colorimetric sensing of ascorbic acid via target-induced silver overcoating

This article describes a nonaggregation-based colorimetric assay of ascorbic acid by tailoring the optical properties of mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorods (MS GNRs) via silver overcoating. The colorimetric measurement of ascorbic acid (AA) concentration strongly relies on the fact that the blue shift effect of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak of MS GNRs is gradually enlarged with the increase of AA amount. The limit of detection is determined to be 49 nM, which is comparable to that of quantum dots (QDs)-based fluorimetric methods.