Issue 4, 2023

Coupling of plasmonic hot spots with shurikens for superchiral SERS-based enantiomer recognition

Abstract

Detection of enantiomers is a challenging problem in drug development as well as environmental and food quality monitoring where traditional optical detection methods suffer from low signals and sensitivity. Application of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for enantiomeric discrimination is a powerful approach for the analysis of optically active small organic or large biomolecules. In this work, we proposed the coupling of disposable chiral plasmonic shurikens supporting the chiral near-field distribution with SERS active silver nanoclusters for enantio-selective sensing. As a result of the plasmonic coupling, significant difference in SERS response of optically active analytes is observed. The observations are studied by numerical simulations and it is hypothesized that the silver particles are being excited by superchiral fields generated at the surface inducing additional polarizations in the probe molecules. The plasmon coupling phenomena was found to be extremely sensitive to slight variations in shuriken geometry, silver nanostructured layer parameters, and SERS excitation wavelength(s). Designed structures were able to discriminate cysteine enantiomers at concentrations in the nanomolar range and probe biomolecular chirality, using a common Raman spectrometer within several minutes. The combination of disposable plasmonic substrates with specific near-field polarization can make the SERS enantiomer discrimination a commonly available technique using standard Raman spectrometers.

Graphical abstract: Coupling of plasmonic hot spots with shurikens for superchiral SERS-based enantiomer recognition

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
09 saus. 2023
Accepted
26 saus. 2023
First published
31 saus. 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale Horiz., 2023,8, 499-508

Coupling of plasmonic hot spots with shurikens for superchiral SERS-based enantiomer recognition

O. Guselnikova, R. Elashnikov, V. Svorcik, M. Kartau, C. Gilroy, N. Gadegaard, M. Kadodwala, A. S. Karimullah and O. Lyutakov, Nanoscale Horiz., 2023, 8, 499 DOI: 10.1039/D3NH00008G

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