Silanization of polyelectrolyte-coated particles: an effective route to stabilize Raman tagging molecules adsorbed on micrometer-sized silver particles.

Micrometer-sized Ag (microAg) powders are very efficient surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. To use microAg powders as a core material for molecular sensors operating via SERS, it is necessary to stabilize the tagging (i.e., SERS-marker) molecules adsorbed onto them. We demonstrate in this work that once the tagging molecules are coated with aliphatic polyelectrolytes such as poly(allylamine hydrochloride), the base-catalyzed silanization can be readily carried out to form stable silica shells around the polyelectrolyte layers by a biomimetic process; any particle can therefore be coated with silica since polyelectrolytes can be deposited beforehand via a layer-by-layer deposition method. Even after silanization, the SERS peaks of marker molecules on microAg particles are the only observable peaks since aliphatic polyelectrolytes, as well as silica shells, are intrinsically weak Raman scatterers, and more importantly, the SERS signals must be derived mostly from the first layer of the adsorbates (i.e., the marker molecules) in direct contact with the microAg particles. Silica shells, once fabricated, can further be derivatized to possess biofunctional groups; therefore, the modified microAg particles can be used as platforms of highly stable SERS-based biological sensors, as well as barcoding materials.