Enhanced bioaffinity sensing using surface plasmons, surface enzyme reactions, nanoparticles and diffraction gratings.

This paper introduces a novel approach to surface bioaffinity sensing based on the adsorption of nanoparticles onto a gold diffraction grating that supports the excitation of planar surface plasmons. A surface enzymatic amplification reaction is also incorporated into the detection scheme to enhance the sensitivity and utility of the nanoparticle-enhanced diffraction grating (NEDG) sensors. As a demonstration, the detection of microRNA is described where a combination of a surface polymerase reaction and DNA-modified nanoparticles is used to detect the bioaffinity adsorption of the target onto the probe-functionalized gold grating surface. The enzymatically-amplified NEDG sensors possess a great potential for a wide range of applications including the detection of biosecurity agents, DNA and RNA viruses, biomarkers, and proteins.