Highly ordered graphene-isolated silver nanodot arrays as SERS substrate for detection of urinary nucleosides

Abstract

An efficient surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate has been developed based on highly ordered arrays of graphene-isolated Ag nanodot (G/AgND) arrays. By combining the plasmonic activity of AgND arrays and unique physical/chemical properties of graphene, the G/AgND arrays show high performance in terms of sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio and reproducibility. The SERS signals of R6G are clearly detected even at very low concentration of 10-11M. The maximum deviations of SERS intensities from 20 positions of the SERS substrate are less than 5%. The G/AgND arrays were employed for detection of human urinary nucleosides. The diagnostic algorithms based on principal component analysis achieved a diagnostic sensitivity of 91.1% and specificity of 93.3% for separating cancer from normal samples. This work demonstrates that G/AgND arrays used in Raman spectroscopy could be developed as a smart and promising system for detection and screening of cancers.