Label-Free Sers Detection of Uric Acid Using Silver Functionalized Tio2 Nanorods Based Sers Substrates

The presence of uric acid in human body fluids is a significant indicator of diseases like gout, preeclampsia, or cardiovascular disease. However, the conventional techniques used for its detection are either insensitive, expensive, complex, and necessitates the use of costly equipment. Surface-Enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has demonstrated significant superiority in terms of non-invasiveness for trace and ultra-trace detection and serves as a powerful technique for rapid, sensitive, non-destructive, and label-free detection of biomolecules such as uric acid. Herein, silver functionalized TiO 2 nanorods were developed as substrate to construct a novel SERS sensor for the sensitive detection of uric acid in body fluids. The sensing material was characterized structurally and morphologically using XRD, SEM and TEM analysis. Finally, the developed sensing material was used for the detection of uric acid at different concentrations within the clinically relevant range from 100 uM to 500 uM, which showed the possibility of the developed substrate to detect uric acid at trace-level concentrations down to 100 uM. This work demonstrated a new approach to develop semiconductor substrates with strong SERS effect paving a new way for low-concentration detection of biomolecules.