Sel-assembled Rhodium Nanoantennas for Single-Protein UV SERS

作者：Yanqiu Zou, Nicco Corduri, Francesco Damico, Karol Kolataj, Huaizhou Jin, Zhenrong Zheng, Yifan Yu, Jie Liu, Shukun Weng, Ali Douaki, Jerome Wenger, Shangzhong Jin, Guillermo P. Acuna, Denis Garoli · 发表于：arXiv (Cornell University) · 年份：2026 · 研究领域：Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications、Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research、Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) provides critical insights into analyte structure, dynamic processes, and intermolecular interactions at the single-molecule level. By exploiting the hotspot formation in the vicinity of plasmonic structures, SERS constitutes an established tool for fundamental biological research, particularly for early-stage disease diagnostics. In this context, the DNA Origami technique, with its high addressability, enables both the assembly of plasmonic nanostructures with nanometric accuracy, and the deterministic placement of a single analyte molecule precisely at the generated hotspot within them. To date, most DNA Origami based nanoantennas rely on gold or silver nanoparticles (NPs), whose plasmonic resonances are confined to the visible spectrum, severely limiting their use in other spectral ranges. To extend the operating range, we have recently established a robust strategy for self-assembling programmable ultraviolet (UV)-plasmonic dimer antennas using rhodium nanocubes. Herein, we leverage this tailored architecture to systematically investigate its performance for single-molecule UV-SERS. We demonstrated how biofabricated Rh-dimers can be used to detect the characteristic SERS signal of a single streptavidin molecule linked at the dimer s gap. Our results are validated through polarization dependent measurements that yield the expected signal modulation depending on the the dimer orientation only for the DNA origami with a protein at the...