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A Controlled and Reproducible Pathway to Dye-Tagged, Encapsulated Silver Nanoparticles as Substrates for SERS Multiplexing
journal contribution
posted on 2008-03-18, 00:00 authored by Leif O. Brown, Stephen K. DoornSilver nanoparticles tagged with dyes and encapsulated within a silica layer, offer a convenient potential substrate
for performing multiplexed surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) analysis. In contrast to our earlier work with
gold particles, aggregation of silver particles is found to be mostly independent of dye addition, allowing for a
reproducible preparation in which aggregation is actively induced by the addition of NaCl. Separating the aggregation
step eliminates competitive binding between the dyes and silica-coating reagents, enabling the efficient use of a wide
variety of weakly binding dyes to conveniently generate robust, high-intensity SERS substrates at a variety of excitation
frequencies.