Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are valuable health indicators, with synthetic breath biomarkers offering rapid and disease-specific diagnostics. However, their 103 electric field enhancement, were generated between a gold film and gold-silica core-shell nanoparticle assemblies using electric field-driven evaporation. Oxygen plasma treatment hydroxylated the silica, enabling water-mediated hydrogen bonding that strengthened PFP adsorption, confirmed by density functional theory. This mechanism improved SERS sensitivity by 104-fold, enabling ppb level PFP detection in mouse bronchial fluid and establishing a VOC capturing SERS platform for breath-based diagnostics.
Garg et al. (2026) studied this question.