Detection of Paracetamol in Water and Urea in Artificial Urine with Gold Nanoparticle@AI Foil Cost-efficient SERS Substrate

Abstract

We demonstrated that a cost-efficient, easy to prepare, hybrid SERS substrate-gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on untreated Al foil (AlF) can effectively detect pharmaceuticals, such as paracetamol and clinical biomarkers, like urea in artificial urine. The limit of detection (LOD) for paracetamol on AuNPs on AlF is superior (0.1 vs. 1 mM ) to the LOD reported for SERS detection of paracetamol in the literature. For SERS detection of urea in urine, AuNPs on both Al foil and Au film performed much better than AuNPs on glass, in terms of the concentration range, linearity and LOD. However, assay on AuNPs on AlF showed a better semi-logarithmic trendline with R 2 = 0.98 than an assay on AuNPs on Au film with R 2 = 0.94. They have comparable sensitivity with LOD 0.024 and 0.017 M, respectively. The limit of quantification (LOQ) of the former is 0.026 M, which makes it sufficient for the quantification of urea in urine at both normal and pathophysiological (0.03 -0.15 M) concentration.

Polarization- and Angular-Resolved Optical Response of Molecules on Anisotropic Plasmonic Nanostructures

“…This technique is called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and it provides enhancement of the Raman scattering by a factor of 10 4 or higher due to resonance excitation of plasmons localized in the metallic nanostructures [ 13 ]. Due to its high sensitivity, SERS has found use in numerous bio-related applications [ 14 , 15 ], e.g., for the detection of pharmaceuticals and drugs [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], food additives [ 19 , 20 ], explosives [ 21 , 22 ], disease biomarkers [ 23 , 24 , 25 ] and many others.…”

How gap distance between gold nanoparticles in dimers and trimers on metallic and non-metallic SERS substrates can impact signal enhancement

“…24 There have been reports on the application of aluminum as an inexpensive, versatile, and sensitive substrate for Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS), with excitation in the visible range. [24][25][26][27] Besides metal substrates, the use of silicon wafer as a SERS substrate is quite widespread and has shown promising results in several studies. [28][29][30] Silicon wafer is significantly cheaper than plasmonic metal substrates and has remarkable stability that is on par with its biocompatibility.…”

“…Many sensing applications of SERS use gold nanoparticles on the surface of gold or other metal films as SERS substrates. 11,[25][26]56 However, most of the published investigations of individual NP aggregates' SERS properties were performed on the surface of non-metallic substrates like glass 45,47 , silicon-based substrates 35,46 , or TEM grids. 32 Super-resolution SERS imaging developed by the Willet group can achieve a high resolution (<10 nm) in hot spot imaging, but it is still relatively complicated and hardly economical for an ensemble measurement of the statistically significant number of agglomerated/associated nanoparticles.…”

A New Artificial Urine Protocol to Better Imitate Human Urine

“…AU specimens have been studied in many different research areas such as dermatology, urology, nephrology, pharmacology 7–9 . There are numerous protocols for preparing AU in literature.…”