Issue 30, 2023, Issue in Progress

Flexible, stretchable, and single-molecule-sensitive SERS-active sensor for wearable biosensing applications

Abstract

The development of wearable sensors for remote patient monitoring and personalized medicine has led to a revolution in biomedical technology. Plasmonic metasurfaces that enhance Raman scattering signals have recently gained attention as wearable sensors. However, finding a flexible, sensitive, and easy-to-fabricate metasurface has been a challenge for decades. In this paper, a novel wearable device, the flexible, stretchable, and single-molecule-sensetive SERS-active sensor, is proposed. This device offers an unprecedented SERS enhancement factor in the order of 1011, along with other long-desired characteristics for SERS applications such as a high scattering to absorption ratio (∼2.5) and a large hotspot volume (40 nm × 40 nm × 5 nm). To achieve flexibility, we use polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the substrate, which is stable, transparent, and biologically compatible. Our numerical calculations show that the proposed sensor offers reliable SERS performance even under bending (up to 100° angles) or stretching (up to 50% stretch). The easy-to-fabricate and flexible nature of our sensor offers a promising avenue for developing highly sensitive wearable sensors for a range of applications, particularly in the field of personalized medicine and remote patient monitoring.

Graphical abstract: Flexible, stretchable, and single-molecule-sensitive SERS-active sensor for wearable biosensing applications

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
08 May 2023
Accepted
04 Jul 2023
First published
11 Jul 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2023,13, 20787-20798

Flexible, stretchable, and single-molecule-sensitive SERS-active sensor for wearable biosensing applications

M. A. Haque Chowdhury, N. Tasnim, M. Hossain and A. Habib, RSC Adv., 2023, 13, 20787 DOI: 10.1039/D3RA03050D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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