Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, P. R. China.
Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 May 31;15(21):25275-25284. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c00498. Epub 2023 May 22.
As a remarkably powerful analytical technique, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) continues to find applications from molecular biology and chemistry to environmental and food sciences. In search of reliable and affordable SERS substrates, the development has moved from noble metals to other diverse types of structures, , nano-engineered semiconductor materials, but the cost of the enhancement factors (EF) substantially decreasing. In this work, we employ biocompatible thin films of Ti-Si-Zr-Zn nanometallic glasses as the SERS substrates, while tuning the Zn composition. Aided by quartz crystal microbalance, we find that the composition of 4.3% Zn (Ti-Si-Zr-Zn) gives an ultrasensitive detection of Cytochrome (Cyt ) with an EF of 1.38 × 10, 10-fold higher than the previously reported EF in the semiconducting metal oxide nanomaterials, such as TiO, and even comparable to the reported noble-metal-assisted semiconducting tungsten oxide hydrate. Ti-Si-Zr-Zn exhibits a stronger adhesion force toward Cyt , which ensures the strong binding of Cyt to the surface, facilitating the Cyt adsorption onto the surface and thus enhancing the SERS signal. The high separation efficiency of photoinduced electrons and holes in Ti-Si-Zr-Zn is also acknowledged for promoting the SERS activity.
作为一种非常强大的分析技术，表面增强拉曼散射（SERS）继续从分子生物学和化学应用到环境和食品科学。为了寻找可靠和负担得起的 SERS 衬底，发展已经从贵金属转移到其他各种类型的结构，包括纳米工程半导体材料，但增强因子（EF）的成本大大降低。在这项工作中，我们采用生物相容性的 Ti-Si-Zr-Zn 纳米金属玻璃薄膜作为 SERS 衬底，同时调整 Zn 的组成。在石英晶体微天平的帮助下，我们发现 Zn 含量为 4.3%（Ti-Si-Zr-Zn）的薄膜对细胞色素（Cyt）具有超灵敏的检测能力，增强因子（EF）高达 1.38×10^10，比之前报道的半导体金属氧化物纳米材料（如 TiO）中的 EF 高 10 倍，甚至可与报道的贵金属辅助半导体氧化钨水合物相媲美。Ti-Si-Zr-Zn 对 Cyt 具有更强的粘附力，这确保了 Cyt 与表面的强结合，有利于 Cyt 吸附到表面，从而增强了 SERS 信号。Ti-Si-Zr-Zn 中光生电子和空穴的高分离效率也被认为是促进 SERS 活性的原因。
