title: Rapid and reproducible analysis of thiocyanate in real human serum and saliva using a droplet SERS-microfluidic chip.
abstract: As thiocyanate (SCN(-)) acts as an important biomarker in human health assessment, there remains an urgent need to realize rapid and reproducible analysis of SCN(-) in body fluids. Here, a droplet microfluidic device has been designed and fabricated for SCN(-) detection in real human serum and saliva using the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique. Only a few minutes are needed for the whole detection process which simply cost a few microliters of real sample. Gold@silver core-shell nanorods (Au@Ag NRs) with a large SERS enhancement factor were selected to capture SCN(-) ions in body fluids. The intensity of SERS peak at around 2100 cm(-1), which originates from the -C≡N stretching mode, was used to indicate the concentrations of SCN(-) ions. Importantly, by generating a droplet environment for mixing reagents and acquiring signals, this microfluidic platform possesses the advantages of an improved reproducibility and reduced time consumption. For practical applications, the SERS-microfluidic system is capable to achieve rapid analysis of SCN(-) in the presence of human serum, which is very important for realizing the detection in real biological samples. Additionally, SCN(-) in saliva samples was detected in the SERS-microfluidic chip and the results provide useful information for distinguishing between smokers and nonsmokers.
authors: Advanced Photonics Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
authors: Lei
authors: L
authors: Wu
authors: Advanced Photonics Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. Electronic address: wangzy@seu.edu.cn.
authors: Zhuyuan
authors: Z
authors: Wang
authors: Advanced Photonics Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
authors: Shenfei
authors: S
authors: Zong
authors: Advanced Photonics Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. Electronic address: cyp@seu.edu.cn.
authors: Yiping
authors: Y
authors: Cui
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D057230:Limit of Detection; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry*; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013861:Thiocyanates / Q000032:analysis* / Q000097:blood*
chemical_list: D013861:Thiocyanates; C031760:thiocyanate
keywords: Microfluidic; Saliva; Serum; Surface enhanced Raman scattering; Thiocyanate detection