Fabrication of Isotope-Enriched Nanostructures using Ultrafast Laser Pulses under Ambient Conditions for Biomolecular Sensing.

Recent advances in the use of stable isotopes necessitate novel synthesis techniques for isotope separation and enrichment that are scalable and offer high throughput. Stable-isotope-enriched nanostructures can offer unique advantages as nanomedicines, safe tracers, and labels and are critical for applications in various industrial processes, metabolic research, and medicine. So far, there exists no method to synthesize miniature isotope-enriched materials at the nanoscale. In this study, we put forward an ultrafast Laser-induced isotope enrichment at nanoscale (LIIEN) to synthesize isotope-enriched nanostructures, eliminating the need for large equipment and expenses, thereby demonstrating a lab-scale isotope enrichment process. We observed a significant isotope enrichment for Carbon nanostructures. The isotope enrichment can be attributed to the redistribution of isotope ions in the plasma plume explained by the plasma centrifuge model. The LIIEN synthesized structures exhibited excellent SERS signal enhancement and reproducibility, making them potential candidates for SERS-based biomolecule sensing. This technique is an efficient method to fabricate nanosized isotope-enriched structures of characteristic properties by carefully tuning laser parameters at ambient conditions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.