Novel Rational Nanohybrid Engineering approach to augment Sensor Technology capabilities

The STAR Lab, SSSIHL, has published a new paper in ACS Applied Nano Materials that demonstrates the use of a novel biopolymer, soluplus-mediated plasmonic nanohybrids for mobile phone-based biosensing applications. This judicious synergy of materials at nanoregime are utilized to revisit and overcome the perpetual problem of Ohmic lossy quenching in metals, thereby demonstrating excellent performance in sensing analytes of interest.

Identifying the Issue

• Sensors are widely used in industrial processes, public health control, homeland security, forensics, environmental health monitoring.
• Photonic nanomaterials made of metallized nanoparticles are globally used for sensor technology development. However, their true potential is plagued by inevitable intrinsic Ohmic losses, that hinder the performance of any sensing platform.
• Therefore, there is a constant need for hybrid material green technologies for global market sensor industries, using nanochemistry-based biocompatible methods.

Objective of the Research

• Identifying fundamental reasons which lead to interband Ohmic losses in terms of basic chemistry and biophysics of nanomaterials.
• Finding an economically viable green technology solution to minimize/prevent the Ohmic losses and improve the performance of plasmonic materials, which in turn translates into superior efficiencies for the industries offering solutions based on sensing technologies.
• Improving the overall sensitivity and specificity of sensor materials in comparison with cost-intensive and hazardous nano-sensor techniques.

Who should read this?
Anyone in industry, working directly or indirectly on sensor development or sensing-related technologies including, security, surveillance, monitoring, environmental safety monitoring, medical technologies, and disease diagnostics. Further, this article will be extremely useful to researchers currently faced with the problem of ‘Losses in plasmonic nanomaterials.

AgAu NanoHyrbid Engineering – A burgeoning practical solution for the problems in biosensors

• The eco-friendly and biocompatible methodologies for diverse applications in nanophotonics and biomedical domains are discussed in this work.
• Soluplus is a graft copolymer of polyvinyl caprolactam – polyvinyl acetate – polyethylene glycol. Although extensively used for improving the solubility and bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs, amphiphilic chemical bi-functional properties have so far not been explored for green nanosynthesis.
• The three main long-lasting challenges in plasmonic technology development have been addressed experimentally and theoretically in this research work. The proposed hybrid materials overcome the following caveats: (i) inescapable quenching in the presence of AuNPs, (ii) chemical unsteadiness in AgNPs, and (iii) inherent Ohmic losses in metallized NPs.

Key Features and Benefits

• Use of hybrid plasmonic passages to avoid Ohmic losses.
• Experimental demonstration of dequenched and augmented SPCE enhancement.
• The multifold nanogaps generated by the nano-engineered hybrids sustain innumerable hotspots catering to the attomolar sensitivity of the SPCE reporter molecule, rhodamine B (RhB).
• The proposed green nanotechnology platform is useful in disease diagnostics for monitoring the early stages of the disease and also aid in the fabrication of smart sensor chips for use in Point-of-Care (POC) devices.

Impact

• A simple, user-friendly, cost-effective methodology presenting a state of “dequenching the quenched” phenomenon successfully addressing the decade-long issue of ‘zone of inactivity’ in plasmonics.
• The subject platform is expected to find immediate deployment for real-time POC medical diagnostics. It is strongly believed that this study presents a stepping stone to a plethora of exciting plasmonic nano-architectures and disruptive diagnostics in near future with the aid of Au-Ag-Au noble metal plasmon passage rationality.
• An industry or market seeking such devices with augmented sensitivity could take forward the proposed methodology for utility in early disease diagnostics, environmental safety, and industrial applications.
• A green approach for Nano-engineering of AgAu inter-plasmonic and photonic sensor platforms that are of immense benefit for low- and middle-income countries, in resource-limited settings.
• The mobile phone-based sensor platform presents a user-eco-friendly and economical detector compared to existing high-cost spectrophotometers.

Team

Aayush Rai, Seemesh Bhaskar, Sai Sathish Ramamurthy. STAR Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, CRIF, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthi Nilayam, Puttaparthi, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh 515134, India

Paper Published In: ACS Applied Nano Materials

Read Paper Here: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.1c00841