Selective and sensitive detection of metal ions by plasmonic resonance energy transfer-based nanospectroscopy

Highly selective and sensitive optical methods for the detection of metal ions have had a substantial impact on molecular biology^1-3, environmental monitoring^4-10 and other areas of research. Here we demonstrate a new method for detecting metal ions that is based on selective plasmonic resonance energy transfer (PRET) between conjugated metal-ligand complexes and a single gold nanoplasmonic probe. In addition to offering high spatial resolution due to the small size of the probe, our method is 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than organic reporter-based methods^3-8. Moreover, it can achieve high selectivity owing to the selective formation of Cu²⁺ complexes and selective resonant quenching of the gold nanoplasmonic probe by the conjugated complexes. We expect that PRET-based metal ion sensing could have applications in cellular imaging, systems biology and environmental monitoring.