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

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.