Surface enhanced spectroscopy-active composite nanoparticles
AssigneeSurroMed, Inc.
InventorMichael J. Natan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Metal nanoparticles associated with a spectroscopy-active analyte and surrounded by an encapsulant are useful as sensitive optical tags detectable by surface-enhanced spectroscopy.
Claims24
A method of tagging a molecule, cell, bead or solid support comprising attaching a particle comprising a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-active metal nanoparticle associated with a Raman spectroscopy-active molecule and an encapsulant surrounding said SERS-active metal nanoparticle and said Raman spectroscopy-active molecule to said molecule, cell, bead, or solid support, wherein said particle has a measurable SERS spectrum.
A method of encoding the reaction history of a solid support, said method comprising the steps of
- (a) reacting said solid support with a first reagent under a first reaction condition;
- (b) attaching to said solid support a first species of particle comprising a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-active metal nanoparticle associated with a first Raman spectroscopy-active molecule and an encapsulant surrounding said SERS-active metal nanoparticle and said Raman spectroscopy-active molecule, wherein said first species of particle has a measurable and distinct SERS spectrum, and wherein said first species of particle encodes the first reagent or the first reaction condition;
- (c) reacting said solid support with a second reagent under a second reaction condition;
- and
- (d) attaching to said solid support a second species of particle comprising a SERS-active metal nanoparticle associated with a second Raman spectroscopy-active molecule and an encapsulant surrounding said SERS-active metal nanoparticle and said Raman spectroscopy-active molecule, said second species of particle encoding the second reagent or the second reagent condition, wherein said second species of particle has a measurable and distinct SERS spectrum, and said second species of particle having a different spectrum than said first species of particle;
- whereby a compound is synthesized on said solid support.
A method for conducting an assay comprising:
- attaching to a molecule a particle comprising a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-active metal nanoparticle associated with a Raman spectroscopy-active molecule and an encapsulant surrounding said SERS-active metal nanoparticle and said Raman spectroscopy-active molecule, wherein said particle has a measurable SERS spectrum;
- and
- measuring the SERS spectrum of said assay to determine the presence of said molecule.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.