Fluorescence Signal Enhancement by a Spray-Assisted Layer-by-Layer Technique on Aluminum Tape Devices for Biosensing Applications

Layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembled polyclectrolyte multilayer (PEM) films are a simple yet elegant bottom-up technology to create films at the nano-microscale. This low-cost technology has been widely used as a universal functionalization technique on a broad spectrum of substrates. Biomolecules under investigation can be incubated onto films based on complementary charge interactions between the films and biomolecules. There is a great demand for developing an ultralow-cost biosensing device, which can optimally enhance the fluorescence signal of the adsorbed biomolecules from the traditional labeled sensing platforms. In this work, we have incorporated a blend of the conventional metal enhanced fluorescence technology and the PEM as a dielectric spacer and functionalized film, coated on an aluminum paper (tape)-based substrate. These device has been found to be capable of holding biomolecules in three-dimensional PEM space. The devices fabricated by the proposed spray LbL technique provide significant fluorescence signal enhancement by holding a relatively higher mass per volume of the adsorbed biomolecules, when compared to traditional spin- and dip-coating techniques. Interestingly, our proposed device has expressed a fluorescence enhancement factor, which is 9 times higher than PEM-functionalized glass-based devices. To demonstrate the practical utility of our devices, we also compared our devices to Whatman FAST slides. Our experimental fluorescence results are almost comparable to Whatman FAST slides. Such PEM devices fabricated on top of low-cost aluminum tape using a spray LbL technique give new insights into the future development of ultralow-cost, high-throughput, and disposable lab-on-chip diagnostic applications.

Automated summary

Layer-by-layer self-assembled polyelectrolyte multilayer films are a simple and elegant way to create films at the nano-microscale. This technology has been widely used as a universal functionalization technique on various substrates. In this study, a blend of conventional metal enhanced fluorescence technology and polyelectrolyte multilayer film was incorporated as a dielectric spacer and functionalized film on an aluminum tape-based substrate. The resulting device showed significant fluorescence signal enhancement compared to traditional coating techniques and demonstrated potential for low-cost and high-throughput lab-on-chip diagnostic applications.