By using the finite difference time domain method, the localized surface plasmon extinction spectrum of different sizes of spherical gold and silver nanoparticles were simulated and analyzed in external environments with various refractive indices. It was observed that the changes in
the position of the resonance wavelength were linearly proportional to the external refractive index, while the sensitivity increased with nanoparticle size. The sensitivity of the spherical silver nanoparticles with a radius of 40 nm reached 122 nm/RIU. For the silver and gold nanoparticles
of the same size, the sensitivity of the silver nanoparticles was greater than that of the gold nanoparticles. In the experiment, the spectral characteristics of the silver nanoparticles with different sizes under various external refractive indices were measured. The experimental results
were consistent with the simulation results. The resonance wavelength and the concentration of the solution showed a good linear relationship. By using the sensitive properties of the nanoparticles such as external refractive index, the amount of sucrose in the solution can be measured.
Lei Wu,Zhuyuan Wang,Shenfei Zong,Zhi Huang,Puyang Zhang,Yiping Cui
An immunoassay based on surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has been developed using immuno-gold/silver core-shell nanorods with a high sensitivity. The features of these nanoparticles were characterized by UV–vis extinction spectra, TEM images, EDX analyses and SERS spectra. It was found that the obtained gold/silver core-shell nanorods showed a much higher SERS activity than uncoated gold nanorods. After the gold/silver core-shell nanorods were modified with antibody and employed in immunoassay, the antigen concentration-dependent SERS spectra and dose-response calibration curves were obtained. By comparison, it can be concluded that the detection limit of gold/silver core-shell nanorods based immunoassay reaches 70 fM, which is 10 4 times lower than gold nanorods based detection. As a result, SERS probes fabricated with gold/silver core-shell nanorods are demonstrated to be advantageous to those synthesized with gold nanorods due to their highly increased sensitivity in sandwich immunoassay, which also indicates the potential use of these gold/silver core-shell nanorods in other biological sensing applications.