title: Optical aggregation of metal nanoparticles in a microfluidic channel for surface-enhanced Raman scattering analysis.
abstract: Aggregated metal nanoparticles exhibit enhanced localized electromagnetic fields that enable highly sensitive vibrational spectroscopy analysis based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). We demonstrate SERS detection of organic analytes adsorbed to optically aggregated silver nanoparticles in a microfluidic device. The combination of optical tweezers and microfluidics technologies paves the way for novel lab-on-a-chip based plasmonic chemo/bio sensors and overcomes two important drawbacks of standard SERS sensing schemes; i.e. the renewal of nanofabricated metallic substrates and the difficulty of avoiding uncontrolled aggregation in metal colloids.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296, Göteborg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Lianming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Righini
authors.forename: Maria Ujue
authors.initials: MU
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
authors.forename: Romain
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Quidant
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Käll