Mammalian Cell Surface Imaging with Nitrile-Functionalized Nanoprobes:Biophysical Characterization of Aggregation and Polarization Anisotropy in SERS Imaging

摘要

Recently,Raman and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopies have been applied to biosensing,as they offer high information content about the analyte.Nanoparticle-based SERS techniques have proven to be excellent methods for sensing DNA hybridization and protein binding events.However,Raman and SERS microscopies have seen limited applications in biological imaging.Although high-resolution Raman microscopy yields high information content cellular images,this technique is plagued by poor scattering cross sections,which results in lengthy acquisition times and high excitation power.The SERS effect,which is due primarily to the enhancement of the electromagnetic field associated with strong/localized surface plasmon resonances near the surface of nanostructure assemblies,allows for greater sensitivity.Colloidal gold or silver nanoparticles (NPs) are popular SERS active platforms in most biological studies.