Online Flowing Colloidosomes for Sequential Multi-Analyte High-Throughput SERS Analysis

Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2017, 56, pp5565 – 5569

Gia Chuong Phan-Quang, Elizabeth Hui Zi Wee, Fengling Yang, Hiang Kwee Lee, In Yee Phang, Xiaotong Feng, Ramon A. Alvarez-Puebla, and Xing Yi Ling

3D plasmonic colloidosomes are superior SERS sensors owing to their high sensitivity and excellent tolerance to laser misalignment. Herein, we incorporate plasmonic colloidosomes in a microfluidic channel for online SERS detection. Our method resolves the poor signal reproducibility and inter-sample contamination in the existing online SERS platforms. Our flow system offers rapid and continuous online detection of 20 samples in less than 5 min with excellent signal reproducibility. The isolated colloidosomes prevent cross-sample and channel contamination, allowing accurate quantification of samples over a concentration range of five orders of magnitude. Our system demonstrates high-resolution multiplex detection with fully preserved signal and Raman features of individual analytes in a mixture. High-throughput multi-assay analysis is performed, which highlights that our system is capable of rapid identification and quantification of a sequence of samples containing various analytes and concentrations.