Towards Breath Based Diagnostics via Water-mediated Capture of Synthetic Breath Biomarkers in SERS-active Plasmonic Nanogaps

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Garg, Aditya, Morales, Marissa, Shah, Aashini, Kim, Daniel, Lei, Ming, Patel, Sahil, Dong, Jia, Badawy, Seleem, Bhatia, Sangeeta, Tadesse, Loza F.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Garg, Aditya
Morales, Marissa
Shah, Aashini
Kim, Daniel
Lei, Ming
Patel, Sahil
Dong, Jia
Badawy, Seleem
Bhatia, Sangeeta
Tadesse, Loza F.
author_facet Garg, Aditya
Morales, Marissa
Shah, Aashini
Kim, Daniel
Lei, Ming
Patel, Sahil
Dong, Jia
Badawy, Seleem
Bhatia, Sangeeta
Tadesse, Loza F.
contents Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are valuable health indicators, with synthetic breath biomarkers offering rapid and disease specific diagnostics. However, their <100 ppb level exhalation requires mass spectrometry, limiting clinical integration. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers a portable, cost-effective alternative. Yet, detecting synthetic breath biomarkers, with inherently low Raman cross-sections, at <100 ppb remains challenging. We demonstrate SERS detection down to clinically relevant 10 ppb via water-mediated trapping in hydroxylated nanoporous silica-coated plasmonic nanogaps, using pentafluoropropylamine (PFP) as a representative synthetic breath biomarker. Uniform nanogaps, with >1000 times electric field enhancement, were generated between a gold film and gold-silica core-shell nanoparticle assemblies using electric field-driven evaporation. Oxygen plasma treatment hydroxylated the silica, enabling water-mediated hydrogen bonding that strengthened PFP adsorption, confirmed by density functional theory. This mechanism improved SERS sensitivity by 10000 fold, enabling ppb level PFP detection in mouse bronchial fluid and establishing a VOC capturing SERS platform for breath-based diagnostics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_11774
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Breath Based Diagnostics via Water-mediated Capture of Synthetic Breath Biomarkers in SERS-active Plasmonic Nanogaps
Garg, Aditya
Morales, Marissa
Shah, Aashini
Kim, Daniel
Lei, Ming
Patel, Sahil
Dong, Jia
Badawy, Seleem
Bhatia, Sangeeta
Tadesse, Loza F.
Applied Physics
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are valuable health indicators, with synthetic breath biomarkers offering rapid and disease specific diagnostics. However, their <100 ppb level exhalation requires mass spectrometry, limiting clinical integration. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers a portable, cost-effective alternative. Yet, detecting synthetic breath biomarkers, with inherently low Raman cross-sections, at <100 ppb remains challenging. We demonstrate SERS detection down to clinically relevant 10 ppb via water-mediated trapping in hydroxylated nanoporous silica-coated plasmonic nanogaps, using pentafluoropropylamine (PFP) as a representative synthetic breath biomarker. Uniform nanogaps, with >1000 times electric field enhancement, were generated between a gold film and gold-silica core-shell nanoparticle assemblies using electric field-driven evaporation. Oxygen plasma treatment hydroxylated the silica, enabling water-mediated hydrogen bonding that strengthened PFP adsorption, confirmed by density functional theory. This mechanism improved SERS sensitivity by 10000 fold, enabling ppb level PFP detection in mouse bronchial fluid and establishing a VOC capturing SERS platform for breath-based diagnostics.
title Towards Breath Based Diagnostics via Water-mediated Capture of Synthetic Breath Biomarkers in SERS-active Plasmonic Nanogaps
topic Applied Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11774