Silica diatom shells tailored with Au nanoparticles enable sensitive analysis of molecules for biological, safety and environment applications

V Onesto; M Villani; M L Coluccio; R Majewska; A Alabastri; E Battista; A Schirato; D Calestani; N Coppedé; M Cesarelli; F Amato; E Di Fabrizio; F Gentile

doi:10.1186/s11671-018-2507-4

Silica diatom shells tailored with Au nanoparticles enable sensitive analysis of molecules for biological, safety and environment applications

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2018 Apr 10;13(1):94. doi: 10.1186/s11671-018-2507-4.

Authors

V Onesto¹, M Villani², M L Coluccio¹, R Majewska^{3

4}, A Alabastri⁵, E Battista⁶, A Schirato⁷, D Calestani², N Coppedé², M Cesarelli⁸, F Amato¹, E Di Fabrizio⁹, F Gentile¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Magna Graecia, 88100, Catanzaro, Italy.
² IMEM-CNR, Parco Area delle Scienze 37/A, 43124, Parma, Italy.
³ Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, School of Biological Sciences, North-West University, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa.
⁴ South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa.
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
⁶ Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials, University Federico II, 80125, Naples, Italy.
⁷ Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy.
⁸ Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University Federico II, 80125, Naples, Italy.
⁹ King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
¹⁰ Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University Federico II, 80125, Naples, Italy. francesco.gentile2@unina.it.

Abstract

Diatom shells are a natural, theoretically unlimited material composed of silicon dioxide, with regular patterns of pores penetrating through their surface. For their characteristics, diatom shells show promise to be used as low cost, highly efficient drug carriers, sensor devices or other micro-devices. Here, we demonstrate diatom shells functionalized with gold nanoparticles for the harvesting and detection of biological analytes (bovine serum albumin-BSA) and chemical pollutants (mineral oil) in low abundance ranges, for applications in bioengineering, medicine, safety, and pollution monitoring.

Keywords: Au functionalization; Biological sensing; Diatoms; Frustules; SERS; Safety; Sensing devices.