An Expanded Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Tags Library by Combinatorial Encapsulation of Reporter Molecules in Metal Nanoshells
Sergio Rodal‐Cedeira, Alba Vázquez‐Arias, Gustavo Bodelón, Alexander Skorikov, Sara Núñez‐Sánchez, Andrea Laporta, Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, Sara Bals, Luis M. Liz‐Marzán, Jorge Pérez‐Juste, Isabel Pastoriza‐Santos
Abstract
galvanic replacement coupled to seeded growth on Ag NPs. The hole-free closed-shell structure of the nanocapsules is confirmed by electron tomography. The unusually wide encoding possibilities of the obtained SERS tags are investigated by means of either wavenumber-based encoding or Raman frequency combined with signal intensity, leading to an outstanding performance as exemplified by 26 and 54 different codes, respectively. We additionally demonstrate that encoded nanocapsules can be readily bioconjugated with antibodies for applications such as SERS-based targeted cell imaging and phenotyping.