Breath Analysis Based on Advanced Photoinduced Charge Transfer Resonance-Assisted Strategy for Oxidative Stress Monitoring

Monitoring oxidative stress is crucial for disease prevention and health management, but achieving highly sensitive noninvasive detection remains a challenge. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) holds significant promise in precision medicine due to its unique fingerprinting capability and rapid, nondestructive analysis. However, its performance is often constrained by the insufficient exploitation of the chemical enhancement (CM) effect in plasmonic materials. To overcome this limitation, a photoinduced charge transfer (PICT) resonance-assisted strategy based on plasmonic materials is proposed, enabling synergistic enhancement of the PICT resonance and electromagnetic enhancement (EM) through excitation wavelength modulation. This approach significantly improves the spectral resolution and detection sensitivity. Analysis of the selectively enhanced mode under PICT resonance reveals a 100-fold increase in sensitivity toward gaseous aldehyde (exhaled oxidative stress biomarker), achieving an unprecedented detection limit of 60 ppt with high specificity for diverse aldehyde molecules. Furthermore, integration with a portable Raman spectrometer enables accurate discrimination of oxidative stress levels in clinical breath samples between healthy individuals and patients. This work not only presents a novel enhancement strategy for SERS technology but also provides a practical tool for noninvasive health monitoring and pathological analysis.