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Improve the Plasmonic Spectral Detection of Alpha-Fetoprotein: the Effect of Branch Length on the Coagulation of Gold Nanostars

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Abstract

A sensitive spectral sensing method for detection of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) was proposed based on the intense aggregation of colloidal gold nanostars. It has been found that the intensity of the infrared plasmonic absorption peak of the gold nanostar colloid is very sensitive to the addition of AFP. Because of the electrostatic attraction-induced particle aggregation and coagulation, the plasmonic absorbance corresponding to the suspending nanostars fades down rapidly as the AFP concentration is increased. This spectral sensitivity based on the particle aggregation could be effectively improved by increasing the branch length of the gold nanostars, and the limit of detection reaches 2 pg/mL. The corresponding physical mechanism has been illuminated by the tip effect-enhanced surface charge concentration and electrostatic attraction.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant no. 2011jdgz17 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 61178075.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, People’s Republic of China

    Jian Zhu, Jie Gao, Jian-Jun Li, Xin Li & Jun-Wu Zhao

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  1. Jian Zhu
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  2. Jie Gao
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  3. Jian-Jun Li
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  4. Xin Li
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  5. Jun-Wu Zhao
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Correspondence to Jun-Wu Zhao.

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Zhu, J., Gao, J., Li, JJ. et al. Improve the Plasmonic Spectral Detection of Alpha-Fetoprotein: the Effect of Branch Length on the Coagulation of Gold Nanostars. Plasmonics 11, 1175–1182 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-0157-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-0157-2

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