Rhodamine B isothiocyanate-modified Ag nanoaggregates on dielectric beads: A novel surface-enhanced Raman scattering and fluorescent imaging material

Rhodamine B isothiocyanate (RhBITC) is a prototype dye molecule that is widely used as a fluorescent tag in a variety of biological applications. We report in this work that once RhBITC is adsorbed onto Ag on silica or polystyrene beads, it exhibits not only a strong surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signal but also a measurable amount of fluorescence. The RhBITC-modified Ag-deposited silica or polystyrene beads disperse well in ethanol, and they are also readily coated in water with polyelectrolytes for their further derivatization with biological molecules of interest that can bind to target molecules. The application prospects of these materials are thus expected to be very high especially in the areas of biological sensing and recognition that rely heavily on optical and spectroscopic properties. For instance, on the basis of the nature of the SERS peaks of RhBITC, those Ag-deposited silica or polystyrene beads were confirmed, after attaching biotin groups over RhBITC, to selectively recognize streptavidin molecules down to concentrations of 10−13 M based on a signal-to-noise ratio of 3. The biotin–streptavidin interaction was also confirmed from the photoluminescence of RhBITC.