We report a novel approach for fabricating gold nanostar-functionalized substrates for highly sensitive surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based chemical sensing. Gold nanostars immobilized on a gold substrate via a Raman silent organic tether serve as the SERS substrate, and facilitate the chemical sensing of analytes that can either be chemisorbed or physisorbed on the nanostars. Our ...

Novel Raman tags with various reporter molecules embedded in between gold nanostar (AuNS) and gold nanoshell are developed, showing significantly enhanced surface-enhanced Raman scattering intensity compared to gold nanoparticle-based composites. Immunoassay using these AuNS@tag@shell structures is highly specific with sensitivity down to 0.1 pg mL-1 , and is capable of multiplex detection, mak...

We performed cathodoluminescence (CL) spectroscopy and imaging in a high-resolution scanning electron microscope to locally and selectively excite and investigate the plasmonic properties of a multi-branched gold nanostar on a silicon substrate. This method allows us to map the local density of optical states from the nanostar with a spatial resolution down to a few nanometers. We resolve, both...

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) biosensor has been developed by incorporating a gold nanohole array with a SERS probe (a gold nanostar@Raman-reporter@silica sandwich structure) into a single detection platform via DNA hybridization, which circumvents the nanoparticle aggregation and the inefficient Raman scattering issues. Strong plasmonic coupling between the Au nanostar and the Au ...

Gold nanostars provide high sensitivity for single nanoparticle label-free biosensing. The nanostars present multiple plasmon resonances of which the lower energy ones, corresponding to the nanostar tips and core-tip interactions, are the most sensitive to environmental changes. Streptavidin molecules are detected upon binding to individual, biotin-modified gold nanostars by spectral shifts in ...

Here, we report that hybrid multilayered plasmonic nanostars can be universally used as feedback agents for coherent random lasing in polar or nonpolar solutions containing gain material. We show that silver-enhancement of gold nanostars reduces the pumping threshold for coherent random lasing substantially for both a typical dye (R6G) and a typical fluorescent polymer (MEH-PPV). Further, we re...

Near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive liposomes are attractive carriers for targeted and controlled drug delivery to the superficial organ or tissue (e.g., skin). This work describes the development of NIR-responsive liposomes by incorporating gold nanostars within liposomes composed of Phospholipon 90 g and cholesterol. Following cellular delivery, photothermal effect around the gold nanostar u...

Characterization of cancer cells is important in case of personalized cancer therapy. Cells can be characterized based on their surface marker expression level using fluorescence or surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) method, but in both cases its needed additional labeling with fluorescent or Raman dyes, those may cause cellular cytotoxicity. In this study, we report silver (Ag) nanosta...

Abstract Cancer remains a major health problem that plagues human beings, calling widespread attention to develop novel theranostics achieve sensitive diagnosis and efficient therapy. Multifunctional nanomedicine can integrate with treatment formulations has been emerging as powerful strategy overcome the current drawbacks in conventional clinical cancer treatments. Due good biocompatibility, e...