Issue 46, 2023, Issue in Progress

Detecting and differentiating neurotransmitters using ultraviolet plasmonic engineered native fluorescence

Abstract

Detecting neurotransmitters with high sensitivity and selectivity is important to understand their roles in biological functions. Current detection methods for neurotransmitters suffer from poor sensitivity or selectivity. In this article, we propose ultraviolet (UV) plasmonic engineered native fluorescence as a new sensing mechanism to detect neurotransmitters with high sensitivity and selectivity. We measured the native fluorescence of three monoamine neurotransmitters, dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE), and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC). The average net enhancement and total photon yield enhancement on an aluminum hole array with 300 nm hole spacing substrate were found to be 50× and 60×, for the three molecules. We also observed a 1.5–1.7× reduction in the dominant photon bleaching rate on an aluminum hole array compared to an aluminum-thin film substrate. The photobleaching rates of the native fluorescence of DA, NE and DOPAC were found to be highly sensitive to their molecular structures and can be further engineered by UV plasmonic substrates. The differences in the photobleaching rates for DA and NE were 2× and 1.6× larger on an aluminum thin film and an aluminum hole array than on a silicon substrate. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we mixed DA with NE at different concentration ratios and measured the average photobleaching rates of the mixture. We found that the average photobleaching rate is proportional to the concentration of NE in the mixture. Our findings demonstrate the potential of UV plasmonic engineered native fluorescence to achieve sensitive and selective detection of neurotransmitters.

Graphical abstract: Detecting and differentiating neurotransmitters using ultraviolet plasmonic engineered native fluorescence

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
09 Aug 2023
Accepted
24 Oct 2023
First published
07 Nov 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2023,13, 32582-32588

Detecting and differentiating neurotransmitters using ultraviolet plasmonic engineered native fluorescence

J. Lee, M. Mohammadi and Y. Wang, RSC Adv., 2023, 13, 32582 DOI: 10.1039/D3RA05405E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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