Rapid, simple, and sensitive detection of pathogen bacteria is a highly topical research area due to increasingly concerning of food safety and public health. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a promising and attractive technique offering fast, sensitive, comparatively low-cost, and in-suit detection of pathogenic bacteria. However, this technique requires the preparation step for reducing the noise derived from heterogeneous matrixes of food sample. Immunomagnetic separation (IMS) is widely used technique enabling separation and concentration of the target analyte. It can be used not only laboratory scale but also field diagnosis easily. Here, we synthesized gold-shelled starch magnetic microparticles (GS@SMMPs) for effective separation and concentration of Escherichia coli O157:H7, which were subsequently subjected to SERS integrated with gold-coated 3D-well substrate for bacterial detection in aqueous solution. GS@SMMPs were labelled by Anti-E. coli O157 monoclonal antibody through gold binding protein and staphylococcal protein G (GBP-SPG) fusion protein. In IMS experiment, the immuno-GS@SMMPs showed high capture efficiency over 90% to E. coli O157:H7, which resulted in 10 times decrease in detection limit in PCR assay. Through SERS assay, E. coli O157:H7 concentrated by immuno-GS@SMMPs were successfully detected even at an extremely low concentration of 101 CFU/ml the subjected to SERS. Moreover, by using sandwich method using SERS reporter consisting of GBP-SPG, we found that E. coli O157:H7 were able to be detected by SERS quantitatively through measuring the SERS intensity of GBP-SPG. This novel strategy combining SERS and IMS could be meaningful for extending the application in SERS for in-suit sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria.

A dynamic tube pressure method was proposed for a liquid level measurement. The reliability of our in-house manufactured prototype level measurement system was investigated for water samples in a vial as a preliminary study. The prototype instrument, equipped with a stepper motor and a differential pressure sensor, was used to measure the travel distance of the tube from an initial zero position to the liquid surface. Unlike a conventional bubbler method, our dynamic tube pressure method is based on the abrupt changes in the tube pressure to directly detect the liquid surface. Optimum conditions were determined from the measurements of the travel distance with different-sized tubes at various ambient base pressures and various descending tube speeds. In addition, we proposed a gravimetric calibration method. In the gravimetric calibration method, the travel distances are used instead of the liquid level, which can be obtained from the measurement data of the travel distance. The travel distance versus the weight calibration curve showed a good linear relationship (R2 = 0.9999), and standard deviations of the travel distance over the whole range of experimental conditions were less than 0.1 mm. In a further study, our present system will also be used in the measurement of density and surface tension by minimizing the contact time with high-temperature and highly-corrosive molten salts.

We analyzed the effect of etchants for metal catalysts in terms of the characteristics of resulting graphene films, such as sheet resistance, hall mobility, transmittance, and carrier concentration. We found the residue of FeCl3 etchant degraded the sheet resistance and mobility of graphene films. The residue was identified as an iron oxide containing a small amount of Cl through elemental analysis using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. To remove this residue, we provide an alternative etching solution by introducing acidic etching solutions and their combinations (HNO3, HCl, FeCl3 + HCl, and FeCl3+HNO3). The combination of FeCl3 and acidic solutions (HCl and HNO3) resulted in more enhanced electrical properties than pure etchants, which is attributed to the elimination of left over etching residue, and a small amount of amorphous carbon debris after the etching process.

에멀션 기반의 계면활성제를 이용한 주형합성법을 이용하여 산촉매로서 염산과 실리카의 전구체인 테 트라에톡시실란을 사용함으로써 메조다공성 실리카 마이크로스피어를 합성하였다. 테트라에톡시실란의 농도 증가에 의해 구형의 입자 형태가 파괴되었고, 기공구조도 크게 변하였다. 산촉매 농도 증가에 의한 구형의 입자형태 파괴 현상은 적었지만 상대적으로 작은 크기의 구형의 마이크로입자가 더 많이 생성되 었다. 하지만, 산성조건에서 입자들 간의 강한 응집현상이 나타남에 따라 낱개의 분리되어 있는 단일입자 를 얻기 위해서는 초음파 등의 후처리 과정이 필요하였다.