WS2-Gold Nanoparticle Heterostructures Based Novel SERS Platform for Rapid Identification of Antibiotic-Resistant Pathogens

The emerge of antibiotic resistance bacteria is the biggest threat for our society. Rapid finding of drug resistance bacteria is very urgent to guide antibiotic treatment. The current manuscript reported the design of 2D-0D heterostructure based surfaced enhanced Raman (SERS) platform, which has capability for rapid identification of multi drug resistant strain of Salmonella DT104 Details synthesis and characterization of heterostructure SERS platform using two dimensional (2D) WS2 transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) and zero dimensional (0D) plasmonic gold nanoparticle (GNP), has been reported. The current manuscript reveals that 2D-0D heterostructure based SERS exhibit extremely high Raman enhancement capability. Using Rh-6G and 4-ATP probe molecule, we have determined the SERS sensitivity is in the range of 10-10 to 10-11 M, which is several orders of magnitude higher than only 2D-TMD (10-3 M) or only 0D-GNP (10-6 to 10-7 M). Experimental and theoretical finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation data indicates that the synergistic effect of electromagnetic mechanism (EM) and chemical mechanism (CM) on heterostructure is responsible for observed excellent SERS enhancement. Notably, experimental data reported here show that heterostructure based SERS has ability to separate multidrug resistance strain from normal strain of Salmonella by monitoring the antibiotic-pathogen interaction within 90 minutes time, even at the concentration of 100 CFU/mL.