Fabrication of single bacterium sensing chip via silver deposited corrugated polystyrene nanobead array

The Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) bacteria sensing chip was usually developed by wet-etching ^[1] or template-molding ^[2] approach to obtain an enhancement factor of 10^1-3. However, these processes may not be available for the template and difficult to integrate with other complicated fabrication designs. Therefore, in this project, we propose an easy integrated approach to develop high sensitive surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with an enhancement factor of 10^5-6 via a metal-coated polystyrene array for quick detection of the specific bacteria in food. In the experimental results, it is detectable of less than five bacteria per laser spot (~3 μm in diameter) on the silver-coated corrugated polystyrene bead array. The goal of this project is also to develop a disposable and room temperature fabricated SERS sensors for future integration.