Plasmonische Substrate stellen ein leistungsstarkes Werkzeug für analytische Anwendungen dar. Neue plasmonische Substrate werden entwickelt, um das Spektrum ihrer Anwendungen und die Nachweisgrenzen der analytischen Spektroskopie zu erweitern. Diese Arbeit setzte sich zum Ziel, plasmonische Nanostrukturen mit Magnesiumfluorid zu beschichten. Magnesiumfluoridbeschichtungen sind zwar porös, weisen aber eine hohe mechanische Stabilität und außergewöhnliche optische Eigenschaften auf (niedrigen Brechungsindexes, großen optischen Fensters). Die Kombination dieser Eigenschaften mit den positiven Eigenschaften von plasmonischen Nanostrukturen kann zu fortschrittlichen plasmonischen Substraten für analytische Anwendungen führen. Diese Arbeit bietet zwei Ansätze für die Beschichtung der plasmonischen Nanostrukturen an die Core-Shell-Nanopartikelherstellung, die einen plasmonischen Core enthält und die Beschichtung von auf Glas immobilisierten plasmonischen Nanostrukturen. Über Metal@metal Fluoride Core-Shell-Nanopartikel wurde in der Literatur noch nichts berichtet. Daher Au@MgF2wurde ein Ansatz verfolgt, der auf dem Wissen über Metall-@Metalloxide und Metallfluoride@Metallfluoride basiert und die Synthese von Core-Shell-Nanopartikeln ermöglicht. Die erhaltenen Strukturen wurden mit elektronenmikroskopischen Methoden charakterisiert. Der zweite Ansatz bestand in der Immobilisierung von Goldnanopartikeln auf Glas und deren Beschichtung mit Magnesiumfluorid. Diese Fertigungsart verleiht eine hohe mechanische Stabilität und wissenswerte optische Eigenschaften an plasmonischen Substraten, die sich durch eine hohe nanoskopische Homogenität der Goldnanopartikelverteilung auszeichnen und optischer Signale, die echte analytische Anwendungen ermöglichen, ermittelt. Die Beschichtung von auf Glas mit Magnesiumfluorid immobilisierten Goldnanopartikeln führt zu einem sehr vielversprechenden Substrat , das in Zukunft für Sensorik und andere Anwendungen verwendet werden kann. / Plasmonic substrates can be a powerful tool for analytical applications. In order to broaden the spectrum of their applications and to push the detection limits of analytical spectroscopy, new plasmonic substrates are developed. The motivation of this work was to coat plasmonic nanostructures with magnesium fluoride. Coatings of magnesium fluoride are porous but exhibit high mechanical stability and extraordinary optical properties including a low refractive index and a wide optical window. Combining these properties with the beneficial properties of plasmonic nanostructures can lead to advanced plasmonic substrates for analytical applications. Two approaches for coating of the plasmonic nanostructures are proposed in this work: a core-shell nanoparticles fabrication and coating of plasmonic nanostructures immobilized on glass. The fabrication of Au@MgF2 core-shell nanoparticles turned out to be an extremely challenging approach. Such systems have not been reported in the literature yet. Therefore, an approach based on knowledge of metal@metal oxides and metal fluorides@metal fluorides core-shell nanoparticles synthesis was undertaken. The obtained structures were characterized using electron microscopy methods. Due to the numerous difficulties in the synthesis and characterization this way of coating plasmonic nanostructures with magnesium fluoride was not further processed. The approach based on immobilization of gold nanoparticles on glass and coating them with magnesium fluoride using a dip-coating method provides plasmonic substrates that are characterized by a high nanoscopic homogeneity of the gold nanoparticles distribution, a high mechanical stability, interesting optical properties and enhancement factors of optical signals that allow for real analytical applications. The coating of gold nanoparticles immobilized on the glass with magnesium fluoride results in very promising substrate that can be used for sensing and other applications in the future.

Raman optical activity (ROA) is a powerful probe of the structure and behaviour of biomolecules in aqueous solution for a number of important problems in molecular biology. Although ROA is a very sensitive technique for studying biological samples, it is a very weak effect and the conditions of high concentration and long data collection time required limit its application for a wide range of biological samples. These limitations could possibly be overcome using the principle of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The combination of ROA with SERS in the form of surface enhanced ROA (SEROA) could be a solution for widening the application of ROA. In the last few years, the generation of reliable SEROA spectra of biomolecules has been problematic due to non-homogenous colloidal systems forming and low signal-to-noise ratios which complicated detection of the true SEROA signal from the analyte. L- and D-enantiomers give full or partially mirror image chiroptical spectra, this property of enantiomers can be employed to prove the chiroptical activity of the SEROA technique. In this thesis we employed a hydrophilic polycarbopol polymer as stabilising media which has led to the first report of mirror image SEROA bands for enantiomeric structures. This new technique of incorporating the hydrogel polymer as a means to stabilise the colloidal system has proven to be reliable in obtaining high quality SEROA spectra of D- and L-enantiomers of ribose and tryptophan. In an extension of the hydrogel-stabilised SEROA work, we also demonstrate that single nanoparticle plasmonic substrate such as silver silica nanotags can enhance the weak ROA effect. These dye tagged silica coated silver nanoparticles have enabled a chiral response to be transmitted from a chiral analyte to the plasmon resonance of an achiral metallic nanostructure. The measurement of mirror image SERROA bands for the two enantiomers of each of ribose and tryptophan was confirmed for this system. The generation of SEROA for both systems was achieved and confirmed SEROA as a new sensitive tool for analysis of biomolecular structure. In a related project, Raman and ROA spectra were measured for adenosine and seven of its derivative ribonucleotides. Both of these spectroscopic techniques are shown to be sensitive to the site and degree of phosphorylation, with a considerable number of marker bands being identified for these ribonucleotides. Moreover, the SERS studies of these ribonucleotides were also performed. The obtained SERS spectra were shown similar features that confirm these analytes interact with the surface in a similar manner, hence limiting the structural sensitivity of this method towards phosphate position. Short dipeptides such as diketopiperazine (DKP) have been investigated during the last decades as both natural and synthetic DKPs have a wide variety of biological activities. Raman and ROA spectra of linear and cyclic dialanine and diserine were measured to charecterize their solution structures. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out by a collaborator to assist in making vibrational band assignments. Considerable differences were observed between the ROA bands for the cyclic and linear forms of both dialanine and diserine that reflect large differences in the vibrational modes of the polypeptide backbone upon cyclicization. In this study, the ROA spectra of cyclic dialanine and diserine have been reported for the first time which demonstrated that ROA spectroscopy when utilised in combination with computational modelling clearly provides a potential tool for characterization of cyclic peptides.