Spread spectrum SERS allows label-free detection of attomolar neurotransmitters

Wonkyoung Lee, Byoung-Hoon Kang, Hyunwoo Yang, Moonseong Park, Ji Hyun Kwak, Taerin Chung, Yong Jeong, Bong Kyu Kim and Ki-Hun Jeong ()
Additional contact information
Wonkyoung Lee: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Byoung-Hoon Kang: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Hyunwoo Yang: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Moonseong Park: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Ji Hyun Kwak: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Taerin Chung: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Yong Jeong: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Bong Kyu Kim: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
Ki-Hun Jeong: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract The quantitative label-free detection of neurotransmitters provides critical clues in understanding neurological functions or disorders. However, the identification of neurotransmitters remains challenging for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) due to the presence of noise. Here, we report spread spectrum SERS (ss-SERS) detection for the rapid quantification of neurotransmitters at the attomolar level by encoding excited light and decoding SERS signals with peak autocorrelation and near-zero cross-correlation. Compared to conventional SERS measurements, the experimental result of ss-SERS shows an exceptional improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio of more than three orders of magnitude, thus achieving a high temporal resolution of over one hundred times. The ss-SERS measurement further allows the attomolar SERS detection of dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, γ-aminobutyric acid, and glutamate without Raman reporters. This approach opens up opportunities not only for investigating the early diagnostics of neurological disorders or highly sensitive biomedical SERS applications but also for developing low-cost spectroscopic biosensing applications.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20413-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-20413-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20413-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().