Maximizing the electromagnetic and chemical resonances of surface-enhanced Raman scattering for nucleic acids

Although surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has previously been performed with nucleic acids, the measured intensities for each nucleic acid have varied significantly depending on the SERS substrate and excitation wavelength. We have demonstrated that the charge-transfer (CT) mechanism, also known as the chemical enhancement of SERS, is responsible for the discrepancies previously reported in literature. The electronic states of cytosine and guanine attached to silver atoms are computationally calculated and experimentally measured to be in the visible range, which leads to a resonance Raman effect at the corresponding maximum wavelengths. The resulting SERS measurements are in good agreement with the simulated values, in which cytosine-silver shows stronger enhancement at 532 nm and guanine-silver shows stronger enhancement at 785 nm. An atomic layer of aluminum oxide is deposited on substrates to prevent charge-transfer, and corresponding measurements show weaker Raman signals caused by the suppression of the chemical resonance. These findings suggest the optimal SERS signal can be achieved by tuning the excitation wavelength to match both the electromagnetic and chemical resonances, paving the way for future single molecule detection of nucleic acids other than adenine.