High-throughput surface-enhanced Raman scattering sensors for near-infrared detection of biochemical molecules

The inappropriate usage of biochemical molecules has led to serious environmental problems, and there is an urgent need to seek low-cost biochemical molecular sensors. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has received extensive attention due to their high sensitivity and specificity but is limited by low utilization and high cost. Here, we develop a high-throughput and highly sensitive NIR-SERS biochemical sensor (HNIR-SERS sensor) by combining inkjet printing technology with plasmonic metallic nanoparticles. First, we fabricated gridded substrates using imprinting technology, where the separated areas are in a typical cubic arrangement. Porous Au@AuAg yolk-shell nanorods (NRs), serving as assembly units, were then regularly assembled on the substrates by inkjet printing, forming an HNIR-SERS sensor. This new kind of HNIR-SERS sensor can achieve high sensitivity detection of multi biochemical molecules in one sensor substrate. As an example, this HNIR-SERS sensor enables efficient detection of 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP) and rhodamine 6G (R6G), with an enhancement factor (EF) of 108 for 4-ATP. This work provides an effective method to achieve high-throughput and low-cost NIR-SERS sensors for pushing the practical application in Raman detection chips.The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No. 51825103), the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 92263209, 52001306), and the HFIPS Director’s Fund (Grant No. YZJJZX202019). The Scientific Instrument Developing Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. E14BBGU52G1)