Plasmonically Induced Spectral Changes in the SERS Spectra of Tryptophan
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Abstract
Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has seen growing applications in the field of bioanalytical chemistry in recent years. A primary application of SERS in the field is in the analysis of peptides and proteins in biological systems. Therefore, understanding how to properly analyze the results of such studies is important to drawing accurate conclusions from these works. It has been previously observed that SERS spectra of the amino acid tryptophan when acquired with gold nanoparticles exhibits peak shifting when compared with the spontaneous Raman spectrum of tryptophan. This can make it more difficult to understand and interpret protein and peptide spectra as aromatic amino acids contribute more to these spectra when compared to their nonaromatic counterparts. In this work the aim is to determine whether this effect is observable in the presence of silver nanoparticles, as is suggested by the current theory surrounding SERS, or if some other effect is occurring in the gold nanoparticle environment. Silver is investigated due to being one of the most commonly used metals for nanostructures alongside gold.