Abstract

This work aims at the impact of the electrostatic interaction between analyte molecules and silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) on the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performance. For this, we fabricated nanostructured plasmonic films by immobilization of Ag NPs on glass plates and functionalized them by a set of differently charged hydrophilic thiols (sodium 2-mercaptoethyl sulfonate, mercaptopropionic acid, 2-mercaptoethanol, 2-(dimethylamino) ethanethiol hydrochloride and thiocholine) to vary the surface charge of the SERS-substrate. We used two oppositely charged porphyrins, cationic Cu(II)-tetrakis(4-N-methylpyridyl) porphine (CuTMpyP4) and anionic Cu(II)-5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-sulphonatophenyl) porphine (CuTSPP4), with equal charge value and similar structure as model analytes to probe SERS signal. Our results indicate that the SERS spectrum intensity strongly, up to complete signal disappearance, correlates with the substrate’s surface charge that tends to be negative. Using the data obtained and our model SERS-system, we analyzed modification of Ag surface by different reagents (lithium chloride, polyethyleneimine, polyhexamethylene guanidine and multicharged metal ions). Finally, all those surface modifications were tested using a negatively charged oligonucleotide labeled with Black Hole Quencher (BHQ1) dye. Only addition of copper ions into the analyte solution allowed to get a good SERS signal. Considering strong interaction of copper ions with the DNA molecule, we suppose that the analyte charge inversion played the key role in that case, instead of the recharging of the substrate surface. Analyte recharging could be a promising way to get intensive SERS spectra of negatively charged molecules on Ag SERS-active supports.

Keywords: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, silver nanoparticles, substrate modification, electrostatic interaction, oligonucleotides, porphyrin

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Ranishenka, B. V.; Panarin, A. Y.; Chelnokova, I. A.; Terekhov, S. N.; Mojzes, P.; Shmanai, V. V. Beilstein Arch. 2021, 202129. doi:10.3762/bxiv.2021.29.v1

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