Label‐Free Surface‐Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Detection of Amyloid Beta on Silver Nanostructured Substrates for Alzheimer's Diagnosis

ABSTRACT Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a public health concern, for which an early diagnosis is essential. Biomass‐derived carbon fibres with surface‐decorated silver nanoparticles (Ag@CFs) have been utilized as surface enhanced raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensor platform for the detection of the amyloid beta Aβ (25–35) for the pre‐diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Structural and morphological characterizations confirmed the distribution of plasmonic silver nanoparticles over the surface of carbon fibres. The SERS sensor performance of Ag@CFs was evaluated using rhodamine 6G, which showed an enhancement of the order of 10 6 which proved the effectiveness of the developed SERS sensor towards trace level detection of analyte. A range of amyloid beta concentrations, from 100uM to 10pM, have been analyzed as a proof‐of concept for this study, showcasing the efficacy of the Ag@CFs based SERS sensor to detect trace level concentrations of amyloid beta, even as low as 10 pM. This investigation is a promising development in the field of AD diagnostics since it may turn out to be a non‐invasive, economical and early diagnostic tool.