Gold Surface Nanostructuring for Separation and Sensing of Biomolecules

Abstract

Detecting biomolecules in physiological environments is critical to health care and environmental monitoring. In this work, we study and use gold surfaces for biomolecule detection while incorporating nanoscale components—specifically, self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols and gold nanostructured shells—with the goal of improving biomolecule detection methods. Using SAMs to functionalize gold surfaces can offer control over biomolecule binding density and orientation while still keeping the biomolecules near the sensing surface. Using surface IR spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and density functional theory (DFT) modeling, we found that SAMs of short-chain and long-chain amine-terminated alkanethiols on gold had different sulphur binding environments. We also found that protein binding and recognition on the two different SAMs varied with SAM chain length and was also influenced by the presence of a cross-linker. In the second part of this work, we synthesized gold nanostructured shells on magnetic particles for combined separation and detection of biomolecules. We demonstrated their use as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated the use of these particles to detect oligonucleotide binding and hybridization with SERS using a Raman-tagged oligonucleotide hairpin probe.