| Institution: | 1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Chemical Processes, Department of Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Dongchuan Road 500, 200241 Shanghai, China;2. State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy, East China Normal University, Dongchuan Road 500, 200241 Shanghai, China;3. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Chemical Processes, Department of Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Dongchuan Road 500, 200241 Shanghai, China
Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, North Zhongshan Road 3663, 200062 Shanghai, China;4. Department of Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Phosphorus Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, China |
| Abstract: | Semiconductors demonstrate great potentials as chemical mechanism-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates in determination of biological species in complex living systems with high selectivity. However, low sensitivity is the bottleneck for their practical applications, compared with that of noble metal-based Raman enhancement ascribed to electromagnetic mechanism. Herein, a novel Cu2O nanoarray with free carrier density of 1.78×1021 cm?3 comparable to that of noble metals was self-assembled, creating a record in enhancement factor (EF) of 3.19×1010 among semiconductor substrates. The significant EF was mainly attributed to plasmon-induced hot electron transfer (PIHET) in semiconductor which was never reported before. This Cu2O nanoarray was subsequently developed as a highly sensitive and selective SERS chip for non-enzyme and amplification-free SARS-CoV-2 RNA quantification with a detection limit down to 60 copies/mL within 5 min. This unique Cu2O nanoarray demonstrated the significant Raman enhancement through PIHET process, enabling rapid and sensitive point-of-care testing of emerging virus variants. |
