Aluminum nanopyramid array with tunable ultraviolet-visible-infrared wavelength plasmon resonances for rapid detection of carbohydrate antigen 199.

Aluminum-based localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) holds attractive properties include low cost, high natural abundance, and ease of processing by a wide variety of methods including complementary metal oxide semiconductor process, making itself having an edge over conventional ones induced by noble metal. However, the inherent drawbacks of plasmonic mode limited on UV-green wavelength, low refractive index sensitivity, as well as heavy-shape-dependence greatly prevent aluminum plasmonics from real-life biosensing. Here, we demonstrated a uniform quasi-3-dimensional Al nanopyramid array (NPA) structure with tunable ultraviolet-visible-infrared (UV-vis-NIR) plasmon resonances for biosensing. By changing the reflection measuring angle, we could easily obtain typical peaks simultaneously exhibited on the reflectance spectrum across UV-vis-NIR wave region. The Al NPAs carried out high refractive index sensitivities which even comparable with that of noble metal, and can be used as a biosensor for directly detecting cytochrome c and carbohydrate antigen 199 in air after the sensing surface was washed cleanly and dried; the limits of detection were determined to be 800 nM and 29 ng/mL, respectively. Our proposed work therefore initiates the low-cost, high-performance biosensing using aluminum plasmonics, which would find wide applications in rapid diagnosis, mobile-healthcare and environmental monitoring.