Gang Chen‡
ab,
Yuyang Wang‡a,
Hailong Wanga,
Ming Conga,
Lei Chenad,
Yongan Yangc,
Yijia Gengad,
Haibo Lia,
Shuping Xua and
Weiqing Xu*a
aState Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Ave., Changchun, People's Republic of China. E-mail: xuwq@jlu.edu.cn
bCollege of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Ave., Changchun, People's Republic of China
cDepartment of Physics and Electronic Science, Chu Xiong Normal University, Chuxiong 675000, People's Republic of China
dCollege of Physics, Jilin University, 2699 Ave., Changchun, People's Republic of China
First published on 10th October 2014
We report a method for fabricating a highly sensitive, microfluidic surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) chip with highly ordered Ag nanodot arrays as the enhancement substrate for the detection of multiplexed low-concentration analytes. The microfluidic SERS chip features a highly-ordered Ag nanodot array on quartz slides fabricated by depositing Ag with an ultrathin anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) film as template and a channel-patterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cover on top, allowing a tremendous enhancement of electromagnetic field in the proximity of the chip surface because of the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of the Ag nanodots. Via the utilization of a self-built SERS microspectrometer with an inverted configuration, the multiplexed SERS signals of low concentration adenine and thiram can be readily detected with a detection limit down to 5.0 × 10−7 M. This detection system that we developed is flexible and has potential for real commercialization.
Combined with SERS, microfluidic analytics can be a powerful tool. Microfluidic SERS detection methods include using microfluidic channels to contribute to the improved mixing and dispersion of Ag colloids,7,8 using microdroplet-based fluidic systems to produce SERS-active substrates and achieve uniform signals,9 enriching analytes in microfluidic channels for detection,10 and fabricating nano-patterned SERS substrates inside the microfluidic channels for high sensitivity and reproducibility, among which nano-patterned SERS substrates stand out as a more tunable approach to realize the excellent functions of microfluidic analytics. Sun et al. reported that a femtosecond laser direct writing method has been adopted for growing Ag nanoparticle SERS arrays in microfluidic channels with high localizability and controllability for the on-line analysis of molecules.11 Innocenzi et al. fabricated mesoporous nanocomposite materials through the integration of evaporation-induced self-assembly and deep X-ray lithography, obtaining micro-patterned films made using a mesoporous ordered silica matrix containing Ag nanoparticles.12 Wu et al. fabricated highly roughened nano-pillar forests by etching photoresists as a template for a patterned noble metal SERS substrate in the detection zones of a microfluidic channel for highly sensitive detection.13 These works have been focused on the integration of nano-patterned, ordered noble metal nanostructures into microfluidic channels, but most of them suffer high cost and the difficulty of focusing lasers for effective SERS excitation.
In this paper, we developed a microfluidic SERS chip based on an ordered Ag nanodot array as a SERS enhancement substrate, together with an improvement of laser path for the efficient excitation and collection of SERS signals. The Ag nanodot array was evaporated on a quartz slide through a through-hole ultrathin anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) template, and it was later sealed under the microfluidic channels as a detection zone. A polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cover with designed concave channels was mounted and bonded to the quartz slide with the nanodot array, and plastic tubes with diameters corresponding to the width of the channels were inserted as inlets and outlets on the PDMS cover, making a complete SERS microfluidic chip. By doing so, the Ag nanodot array, as an enhancement substrate, was encapsulated in an airtight SERS chip, enhancing its long-term stability and strengthening its resistance to friction and contamination.
In addition to the fabrication of the SERS chip, we also cope with the current difficulty of focusing laser spots onto the SERS-active surface. Current state-of-the-art SERS instruments mainly adopt the method of focusing the laser spots from the channel side (except the optical fibre sensor approach), making it very difficult for SERS equipment with a common optical fibre probe to easily locate and focus the laser spot on the SERS-active sites due to its lack of an imaging system.11,13–16 Nevertheless, it is even harder for a commercial Raman solution to focus inside the microfluidic channel, because the existence of a polymer cover may contaminate the Raman signals of the analytes, and the circulation tubes may be too cumbersome for SERS detection. Therefore, we employed a self-developed Raman micro-analyser equipped with an inverted laser path and an XYZ-axis-moveable microscopic imaging and detection system17 for measuring this SERS microfluidic chip, easily focusing laser spots and performing on-site, real-time SERS detection.
To evaluate the effects of the nanoscale morphology on SERS enhancement of the Ag nanodot array, the SERS spectra of 4-mercaptopyridine (4-MPy) on three kinds of Ag nanodot arrays with different dot-to-dot gaps were directly collected. Because SERS enhancement is mainly attributed to LSPR due to its ability to generate a highly concentrated EM field, and the LSPR property depends on metallic nano-gap structures, we fabricated several nanodot arrays with different dot-to-dot gaps (gap size (d) = 60, 50 and 20 nm) by controlling pore-widening time (t = 45, 50 and 55 min, respectively) to optimize the best-performing substrate. Fig. 1(a) is the SERS spectra of 4-MPy solution (1.0 × 10−5 M) measured on three kinds of nanodot arrays with their corresponding SEM images in Fig. 1(c). SERS signal was greatly enhanced when d was 20 nm, which is consistent with the current theory that a stronger LSPR field is generated on the nanostructures with smaller nano-gap sizes.21–26 Fig. 1(b) shows the LSPR extinction spectra of the three kinds of Ag nanodot arrays. Since quartz slides with nanodot arrays are visibly transparent, LSPR extinction spectra were measured in transmission mode. An evident blue shift of LSRP peak wavelength (λLSPR) and a decreasing trend of transmission intensity (T) smaller that of Ag film can be observed with decreasing gap size. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations of the three kinds of substrates were conducted to explore the EM enhancement (CAD models for FDTD simulation can be found in the ESI file†). The origin of the blue shift should be covered by two aspects: the dipolar plasmon resonance of the individual Ag nanoparticle and the coupling dipolar moments of the neighbouring nanodots. The simulation results show that the 20 nm gap between the Ag nanodots (Fig. 1(f)), although bigger than the usually proposed gap size of sub-10 nm with strong EM-concentrated ability, is still vital for strong EM field coupling and good SERS-active performance.
To demonstrate SERS performance of the Ag nanodot arrays with optimized morphologies, 4-MPy solutions at different concentrations (1.0 × 10−4 to 1.0 × 10−8 M) were used to test the enhancement ability and signal reproducibility of the Ag nanodot array with d = 20 nm. A 5.0 μL droplet of the solution was dropped on the optimized substrate and left to dry before SERS collection. Fig. 2 shows the concentration-dependent SERS spectra of 4-MPy, demonstrating a detection limit of 1.0 × 10−8 M. For a SERS substrate of decent performance, reproducibility is an important issue. Therefore, SERS signals were collected on 25 points on an area of 2 mm2 as shown in Fig. 3(a). The error bar graph is shown in Fig. 3(b), showing the biggest relative standard deviation of 10.2% at 1097 cm−1, which meets the criteria of a high-performance SERS substrate.27,28 Also, the batch-to-batch reproducibility of the Ag nanodot array substrates was evaluated by randomly collecting SERS signals of a 4-MPy solution (1.0 × 10−5 M) from 11 different substrates. Shown in Fig. 3(c) are the average spectra of the SERS signals collected respectively from the 11 different substrates. Fig. 3(d) shows the error bar graph of the average spectra, demonstrating relative standard deviations from 5.9% to 23.7%, varying from peak to peak.
Therefore, the Ag nanodot array with an average gap size of 20 nm (corresponding diameter of 80 nm) and a height of 35 nm was used in the fabrication of the microfluidic enhancement substrate. It has to be noted that in the current Ag nanodot-based nanostructure, we cannot render the SERS substrate a recyclable enhancement substrate, although this can be compensated by a multi-batch channel configuration.
The difference of a complete microfluidic SERS chip from one with a direct substrate is that a cumbersome PDMS cover with moulded channels is capped onto the Ag nanodot array. Therefore, questions that inevitably follow include whether the enhancement substrate can retain the ability of SERS enhancement, and what the ideal way is of collecting satisfactory SERS signals when the substrate is covered underneath the PDMS cover. Our research group has reported a micro-Raman analyser that copes with this problem in our previous publication.17 The reported Raman micro-analyser integrates an inverted microscopic imaging system and a Raman detection system for Raman experiments, with a 3-axis stage controlled by step motors for easy positioning of the laser spot onto the detection zone. Furthermore, the optimized setup of the micro-Raman analyser was designed under the consideration of microfluidic chips that are often capped with moulded channels, so the inverted micro-imaging system and the Raman system were under the microfluidic chips, minimizing the interference brought about by the cumbersome PDMS cover and circulation tubes, while in the meantime retaining SERS enhancement ability of the substrate during detection. In this paper, we utilized this Raman micro-analyser for SERS detection.
To evaluate the performance of the microfluidic SERS chip, solutions of different concentrations of adenine (C5H5N5), a nucleobase in the DNA series that has important roles in biochemistry, and thiram (C6H12N2S4), an ectoparasiticide widely used in seeds and crops and an acute toxin, were injected through the two inlets simultaneously. Through the mixing zone, the two solutions were well mixed into one analyte solution over the nanodot area before being flushed out through the outlet. A total of 10 μL solution was injected for each detection time, allowing 15 min for the analyte molecules to deposit evenly onto the Ag nanodots before Raman detection. It should be noted that for molecules like thiram and adenine, which have no thiols or other functional groups that can make them easily bond to the surface of the plasmonic metal surface, it is normally difficult to simply place a drop of the solution and dry it on the substrate, and then be able to complete the SERS detection, because the molecules will primarily locate in the peripheral region of the deposit due to capillary forces near the contact line, similar to the “coffee ring” effect, leading to a poor spatial reproducibility of the SERS signal.29,30 Injecting a low volume of the molecule solution in a microfluidic channel and letting the molecules deposit evenly on the enhancement substrate before drying out the solution proves to be an ideal way of solving the problem. Fig. 4(a) shows the Raman spectra of the PDMS polymer used in the chip, thiram and adenine powders, exposing the characteristic peaks of the three substances without an enhancement substrate. Although the peak positions can be varied if the molecules are in close range of or absorbed onto a plasmonic matrix, generating shifted Raman peaks, the powder Raman spectra of the target molecules are still necessary since they can provide us all of the fingerprint information or vibrational modes we need in the analysis of SERS signals in multiplexed SERS detection. Moreover, the PDMS cover did not directly contact the Ag nanodot array in the detection (Scheme 1), so the Raman peaks should be consistent in the SERS characterization of the microfluidic SERS chip, which was exactly what was observed. Raman peaks of PDMS at 488 cm−1 (Si–O–Si stretching), 613 cm−1, 708 cm−1 (Si–C symmetric stretching), 862 cm−1 (CH3 symmetric rocking), 1266 cm−1 (CH3 symmetric bending), and 1441 cm−1 (CH3 asymmetric bending) are clearly observed in Fig. 4(a).31 The above peaks are still observed without much change in peak position and intensity in the SERS spectra, demonstrating that no PDMS cover was in direct contact with the Ag nanodots. As for thiram peaks, the medium-intensity 440 cm−2 (CH3–NC deformation and CS stretching) peak turned into a weak peak in the SERS spectra; the very strong 557 cm−1 (S–S stretching) peak turned into a medium intensity peak; the medium 849 cm−1 (CH3–N stretching) peak became a very weak one at 866 cm−1; the strong 973 cm−1 (C–S–S asymmetric stretching) peak disappeared; the weak 1148 cm−1 (CH3 rocking and C–N stretching) peak turned into a medium intensity one at 1141 cm−1; the strong 1372 cm−1 (CH3 symmetric deformation and C–N stretching) peak became a very strong one at 1380 cm−1; the strong 1396 cm−1 (CH3 symmetric deformation) peak disappeared; a new strong 1150 cm−1 (C–N stretching, CH3 deformation, and CH3 rocking) peak appeared (Fig. 4(a)). For adenine peaks, the very strong 722 cm−1 (ring stretching) peak turned into a very strong 734 cm−1 peak, which is the only distinct characteristic peak of adenine (Fig. 4(a)). The very strong peaks of adenine and thiram are demonstrated to be very sharp and distinct in SERS spectra collected with the Ag nanodot arrays as a result of enhancement, making multiplexed detection of two molecules viable.
Fig. 4(b) shows the spectra of adenine and thiram mixture solutions at the concentrations of 5.0 × 10−7 M and 5.0 × 10−6 M. The SERS characteristic peaks are evenly enhanced and can be used to clearly identify both thiram and adenine due to the good LSPR enhancement of the Ag nanodot array. In addition, three points throughout the detection zone, with about a 2 mm length interval in the microchannel, were chosen to collect the SERS signals of the 5.0 × 10−6 M mixture solution. Fig. 4(c) shows good reproducibility throughout the three points, proving that the detection zone can be covered by the Ag nanodot arrays, enabling evenly distributed enhancement effects. Also, SERS signals collected from the PDMS side and quartz slide side were compared in Fig. 4(d). As we have reported,17 by focusing the laser spot beneath the PDMS cover, there is a trade-off of the peak intensities between the SERS spectra collected from the quartz side (adopted configuration) and the PDMS side. When SERS is collected from the PDMS side, the characteristic peaks of PDMS stand out as overwhelming signals, obscuring the peaks of the molecules, making multiplexed identification barely possible. When SERS is collected from the quartz side, the PDMS peaks can be observed not as the overwhelming signals, making the SERS peaks of the molecules distinct enough for low-concentration identification.
Footnotes |
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: (1) CAD models for FDTD simulation. See DOI: 10.1039/c4ra09251a |
‡ These two authors contributed equally to this work and should be regarded as co-first authors. |
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2014 |