Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy on a surface plasmon resonance biosensor platform for gene diagnostics

We propose to integrate the surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) detection capability with a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor platform. As a demonstration setup, the experimental scheme is built from a Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscope. The sample surface is a gold-coated plasmonic crystal substrate. Two oligonucleotide (ODN) probes that have been labeled with two different Raman active dyes are used to achieve a sandwich assay of target ODNs or polynucleotide. Upon complementary hybridizations between the target and probe ODNs, the target can be identified by detecting the narrow-band spectroscopic fingerprints of the Raman tags. This concept has high potential for achieving multiplexed detection of ODN targets because a very large number of probes can be incorporated to the plasmonic crystal substrate, which may find applications in gene based diseases diagnostics. We also explored the detection of single molecules and achieved some preliminary results.