Plasmonic features of free-standing chitosan nanocomposite film with silver and graphene oxide for SERS applications.

A scalable procedure of SERS substrates design was developed using a novel plasmonic structure based on a freestanding chitosan film, silver nanoparticles, and graphene oxide. Chitosan provides a uniform distribution of silver nanoparticles from a colloidal suspension and, therefore, a reproducible Raman signal from local areas of measurements of several tens of microns. The addition of graphene oxide (GO) to the colloidal solution of silver nanoparticles suppresses the tortuous background fluorescence signal from the analyte and leads to an increase in the signal-to-fluorescence background intensity ratio by up to 6 times as compared to structures without GO. The manufactured plasmonic polymer nanocomposite provides a detection limit of down to 100 pM for R6G using a laser wavelength of 532 nm through a portable ×10 objective. The high colloidal stability of GO in water and the use of an aqueous colloid of silver nanoparticles simplify the procedure for creating a substrate by applying the GO-silver composite on the surface of a chitosan film without a need to form a GO film. Therefore, our approach paves a promising avenue to provide more sensitive detection even for the fluorescent analytes with short-wavelength lasers (532, 633 nm) instead of IR (785, 1024 nm) and foster the practical application of the developed plasmonic composites on portable Raman spectrometers.

Simultaneous monitoring of sweat lactate content and sweat secretion rate by wearable remote biosensors.

We report on the simultaneous monitoring of sweat lactate concentration and sweat secretion rate. For this aim lactate oxidase-Prussian Blue enzyme-nanozyme type lactate biosensors were elaborated. The use of siloxane-perfluorosulfonated ionomer composite membrane for enzyme-nanozyme immobilization results in the biosensor displaying flux independence in the whole range of physiological sweat secretion rates (0.025-2 µl cm-2 min-1). On the contrary, current response of the biosensor based on solely siloxane membranes becomes saturated at physiological sweat lactate concentration, depending mostly on the flow rate. Accordingly, for simultaneous monitoring of sweat lactate concentration and its secretion rate both flow-through biosensors were integrated with high-accuracy wearable electronic devices allowing real-time remote monitoring. As found, during exhaustive physical exercise sweat secretion rate and lactate content are independent of each other, thus, confirming that this excretory liquid is suitable for non-invasive diagnostics.