Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an attractive technique in molecular detection with high sensitivity and label-free characteristics. However, its use in protein detection is limited by the large volume of proteins, hindering its approach to the narrow spaces of hotspots. In this study, we fabricated a Au nanoTriangle plate Array on Gel (AuTAG) as an SERS substrate by attaching a Au nanoTriangle plate (AuNT) arrangement on a thermoresponsive hydrogel surface. The AuTAG acts as an actively tunable plasmonic device, on which the interparticle distance is altered by controlling temperature via changes in hydrogel volume. Further, we designed a Gel Filter Trapping (GFT) method as an active protein delivery strategy based on the characteristics of hydrogels, which can absorb water and separate biopolymers through their three-dimensional (3D) polymer networks. On the AuTAGs, fabricated with AuNTs modified with charged surface ligands to prevent the nonspecific adsorption of analytes to particles, the GFT method helped the delivery of proteins to hotspot areas on the AuNT arrangement. This combination of a AuTAG substrate and the GFT method enables ultrahigh sensitivity for protein detection by SERS up to a single-molecule level as well as a wide quantification concentration range of 6 orders due to their geometric advantages.

We demonstrate a facile approach for converting AgCl to functional silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) via photoreduction in the presence of DNA. The resulting AgNPs are biofunctionalized, and exhibit photostable luminescence and DNA-specific Raman signatures, showing high potential for use in DNA-directed recognition and advanced bioimaging.

The rapid development of DNA nanotechnology over the past decade has enabled the self-assembly of conducting building blocks towards the construction of conductive nanowires with potential applications in electronic nanodevices. To date, however, construction of nanostructures with novel electrical properties via DNA templating remains poorly explored. Here, we show that DNA can be used as a guiding template for the fabrication of polyaniline nanowires and gold nanoparticle (AuNP)–polyaniline-alternated hybrid nanowires, both of which exhibit novel electrical properties as characterized by point-contact current imaging atomic force microscopy (PCI-AFM). Specifically, the DNA-templated polyaniline nanowires exhibit Schottky emission-dominated conduction as well as a rectification effect, while the current–voltage (I–V) behaviours of the DNA-templated AuNP–polyaniline hybrid nanowires were found to be attributable to Coulomb blockade effects, probably due to the fact that the configuration of the hybrid nanowires resembles that of a one-dimensional array of multiple tunnel junctions. Given the facile and low-cost self-assembly technique, the present work is of fundamental and technological importance to the fabrication of one-dimensional nanodevices capable of novel charge transport.