Bidimensional assemblies of nonspherical gold nanoparticles for SERS analysis of biomolecules

Direct SERS analysis of proteins has been mainly devoted to the characterization of short peptide fragments or to the prosthetic group of metallo-proteins due to their strong SERS response. Nonetheless, this perspective restricts the investigation to very limited peptide sequences and appears of scarce interest for a thorough characterization of the protein. We tried to overcome the above limitations by setting-up an effective platform for the structural SERS detection of proteins. Our proposal escapes the needs of a preliminary modification of the biomolecule and confers rapidity and reproducibility to the analysis. Optimal results are achieved by the use of nonspherical tipped metallic nanostructures with controlled architectural parameters and their assembly into organized bidimensional arrays including a regular distribution of hot spots for protein entrapment and detection. The investigation evidenced that both the contact points between nanoparticle corners and the holes at the interface between nanoparticles are responsible for substantial SERS activity.