Nanogap Plasmonic Structures Fabricated by Switchable Capillary‐Force Driven Self‐Assembly for Localized Sensing of Anticancer Medicines with Microfluidic SERS

Abstract

AbstractNanogap plasmonic structures, which can strongly enhance electromagnetic fields, enable widespread applications in surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensing. Although the directed self‐assembly strategy has been adopted for the fabrication of micro/nanostructures on open surfaces, fabrication of nanogap plasmonic structures on complex substrates or at designated locations still remains a grand challenge. Here, a switchable self‐assembly method is developed to manufacture 3D nanogap plasmonic structures by combining supercritical drying and capillary‐force driven self‐assembly (CFSA) of micropillars fabricated by laser printing. The polymer pillars can stay upright during solvent development via supercritical drying, and then can form the nanogap after metal coating and subsequent CFSA. Due to the excellent flexibility of this method, diverse patterned plasmonic nanogap structures can be fabricated on planar or nonplanar substrates for SERS. The measured SERS signals of different patterned nanogaps in fluidic environment show a maximum enhancement factor ≈8 × 107. Such nanostructures in microchannels also allow localized sensing for anticancer drugs (doxorubicin). Resulting from the marriage of top‐down and self‐assembly techniques, this method provides a facile, effective, and controllable approach for creating nanogap enabled SERS devices in fluidic channels, and hence can advance applications in precision medicine.