Telomerase has attracted much attention as a universal cancer biomarker because telomerase is overexpressed in more than 85% of human cancer cells while suppressed in normal somatic cells. Since a strong association exists between telomerase activity and human cancers, the development of effective telomerase activity assay is critically important. Here, a nanogaprich Au nanowire (NW) surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor is reported for detection of telomerase activity in various cancer cells and tissues. The nanogap-rich Au NWs are constructed by deposition of nanoparticles on single-crystalline Au NWs and provided highly reproducible SERS spectra. The telomeric substrate (TS) primer-attached nanogap-rich Au NWs can detect telomerase activity through SERS measurement after the elongation of TS primers, folding into G-quadruplex structures, and intercalation of methylene blue. This sensor enables us to detect telomerase activity from various cancer cell lines with a detection limit of 0.2 cancer cells mL −1 . Importantly, the nanogap-rich Au NW sensor can diagnose gastric and breast cancer tissues accurately. The nanogap-rich Au NW sensors show strong SERS signals only in the presence of tumor tissues excised from 16 tumorbearing mice, while negligible signals in the presence of heated tumor tissues or normal tissues. It is anticipated that nanogap-rich Au NW SERS sensors can be used for a universal cancer diagnosis and further biomedical applications including a diverse biomarker sensing.

Atomically flat surfaces of single-crystalline Au nanoplates can maximize the functionality of biomolecules, thus realizing extremely high-performance biosensors. Here, we report both highly specific and supersensitive detection of C-reactive protein (CRP) by employing atomically flat Au nanoplates. CRP is a protein biomarker for inflammation and infection and can be used as a predictive or prognostic marker for various cardiovascular diseases. To maximize the binding capacity for CRP, we carefully optimized the Au nanoplate-Cys3-protein G-anti-CRP structure by observing atomic force microscopy (AFM) images. The optimally anti-CRP-immobilized Au nanoplates allowed extremely specific detection of CRP at the attomolar level. To confirm the binding of CRP onto the Au nanoplate, we assembled Au nanoparticles (NPs) onto the CRP-captured Au nanoplate by sandwich immunoreaction and obtained surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. Both the SERS and SEM results showed that we completely eliminated the nonspecific binding of Au NPs onto the optimally anti-CRP-immobilized Au nanoplate. Compared with the anti-CRP-immobilized rough Au film and the randomly anti-CRP-attached Au nanoplate, the optimally anti-CRP-immobilized Au nanoplate provided a highly improved detection limit of 10–17 M. In this study, it was validated that ultraclean and ultraflat Au nanoplates can maximize the sensing capability of CRP. We expect that these Au nanoplates will enable the feasible detection of many important biomarkers with high specificity and high sensitivity.

We report the surfactant-free vapor-phase synthesis of atomically flat and ultraclean gold nanoplates. These gold nanoplates can offer optimally functional surfaces through the immobilization of molecules without unspecific adsorption and defect, which could be quite valuable for diverse applications including biomedical sensing, plasmonics, molecular electronics, electrochemistry, etc. The ultraflat, ultraclean, and single-crystalline nanostructures, including gold nanoparticles (NPs), gold nanowires (NWs), gold nanobelts, and gold nanoplates, are stereoepitaxially grown on a substrate with a specific orientation. Moreover, the nanostructures can be selectively synthesized by experimental conditions and locations of the substrate. The geometry and orientation of the nanostructures show strong correlations, suggesting a growth process of seed NPs → NWs → nanobelts → nanoplates. This synthetic process can be explained by the mechanism in which the height-to-width ratio of gold nanostructures is determined by the ratio of the atom-supply rate by direct impingement to the atom-supply rate by surface diffusion. We finely tuned the shapes (NPs, NWs, nanobelts, or nanoplates) and sizes (from several micrometers to hundreds of micrometers) of the gold nanostructures by adjusting the deposition flux. Crucially, the surfactant-free and atomically flat gold nanoplates could be optimally bioactive surfaces. We substantially decreased the nonspecific binding of avidin by immobilizing the biotinylated molecules onto the gold nanoplates. Compared with thermally deposited gold films, the single-crystalline gold nanoplates showed a 100 times lower detection limit in the recognition of the biotin−avidin interaction. We anticipate that the gold nanoplates will bring us one-step closer to the realization of ideal biomolecular sensors because the several bioactive gold surfaces can be prepared by immobilizing various biological molecules onto the gold nanoplates.