Catechol-driven self-assembly to fabricate highly ordered and SERS-active glycoadjuvant patterns.

Detection of vaccine (adjuvant and antigen) is crucial for the fundamental studies of immunotherapy. In this work, the catechol-containing glycopolymer obtained by sunlight-induced RAFT polymerization was first designed to generate glycoadjuvant@AuNPs. Then, a simple and general self-assembled technique, catechol-driven self-assembly (CDSA), was developed to fabricate AuNP-based glycoadjuvant patterns, regardless of the size, shape and synthetic method of AuNPs. More importantly, highly ordered glycoadjuvant patterns could be easily formed by catechol-driven self-assembly under confinement, which exhibit a higher SERS signal amplification ability for the detection of carbohydrates (glycoadjuvant).