Plasmophore Enhancement in Fibroblast Green Fluorescent Protein-Positive Cells Excited by Smoke.

Abstract

Considering the large consumption of nicotine and its sedative/stimulant effect on different organs of the body, the detection of low concentration of this material and its subsequent effect on live animals plays a significant role. Optical detection techniques such as plasmonics are the pioneers in highly sensitive detection techniques. However, for investigating the nicotine/smoke effect on live cells, not only the interaction between cell nicotine should be optimized but also the plasmonic interface should show a high sensitivity to the reception of nicotine by the cell receptors. In this study, the sensitivity of the plasmonic detection system was greatly increased using the coupling of plasmon and fluorophore. This coupling could enhance the main plasmonic signal several orders of magnitude besides improving Δ and Ψ ellipsometry parameters. Benefiting from the green fluorescence proteins, the phase shift and the amplitude ratio between the reflections under s- and p-polarized light enhance considerably which verifies the coupling of the dipole of the fluorescence emitter and the plasmons of the metal nanostructure. For 1 s increase of the maintenance time, we encountered a considerable increase in the Δ values that were 0.15° for Te = 1 s and 0.24° for Te = 3 s. Benefiting from extracted ellipsometry parameters, this study could open new avenues toward studying the effect of various types of drugs and stimulants on biological samples using a novel plasmophore platform.