Abstract
Highly selective and sensitive optical methods for the detection of metal ions have had a substantial impact on molecular biology1-3, environmental monitoring4-10 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 methods3-8. 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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 742-746 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Nature Nanotechnology |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by a grant from the Center for Nanostructured Materials and Technology under the 21st Century Frontier R&D Programs of the Korea Ministry of Science and Technology.