American Chemical Society, ACS Nano, 1(8), p. 1022-1030, 2013
DOI: 10.1021/nn405868e
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A novel 814 nm near-infrared surface plasmon resonance (SPR) microscope is used for the real-time detection of the sequence-selective hybridization adsorption of single DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles. The objective coupled, high numerical aperture SPR microscope is capable of imaging in situ the adsorption of single polystyrene and gold particles with diameters ranging from 450 to 20 nm onto a 90 μm × 70 μm area of a gold thin film with a time resolution of approximately one to three seconds. Initial real-time SPR imaging (SPRI) measurements were performed to detect the accumulation of 40 nm gold nanoparticles for 10 minutes onto a gold thin film functionalized with a 100% complementary DNA surface at concentrations from 5 pM to 100 fM by counting individual particle binding events. A 100% non-complementary DNA surface exhibited virtually no nanoparticle adsorption. In contrast, in a second set of SPRI measurements, two component complementary/non-complementary mixed DNA monolayers that contained a very small percentage of complementary sequences ranging from 0.1 to 0.001%, showed both permanent and transient hybridization adsorption of the gold nanoparticles that could be tracked both temporally and spatially with the SPR microscope. These experiments demonstrate that SPR imaging measurements of single biofunctionalized nanoparticles can be incorporated into bioaffinity biosensing methods at sub-picomolar concentrations.