Roughened silver electrodes for use in metal-enhanced fluorescence

Chris D. Geddes, Alexandr Parfenov, David Roll, Ignacy Gryczynski, Joanna Malicka, Joseph R. Lakowicz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

Roughened silver electrodes are widely used for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). We tested roughened silver electrodes for metal-enhanced fluorescence. Constant current between two silver electrodes in pure water resulted in the growth of fractal-like structures on the cathode. This electrode was coated with a monolayer of human serum albumin (HSA) protein that had been labeled with a fluorescent dye, indocyanine green (ICG). The fluorescence intensity of ICG-HSA on the roughened electrode increased by ≈50-fold relative to the unroughened electrode, which was essentially non-fluorescent and increased typically two-fold as compared to the silver anode. No fractal-like structures were observed on the anode. Lifetime measurements showed that at least part of the increased intensity was due to an increased radiative decay rate of ICG. In our opinion, the use of in situ generated roughened silver electrodes will find multifarious applications in analytical chemistry, such as in fluorescence based assays, in an analogous manner to the now widespread use of SERS. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report of roughened silver electrodes for metal-enhanced fluorescence.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1977-1983
Number of pages7
JournalSpectrochimica Acta - Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy
Volume60
Issue number8-9
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2004

Keywords

  • Metal-enhanced fluorescence
  • Roughened silver electrodes
  • Surface-enhanced Raman scattering

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