Using SERS and SEF Spectroscopy to Detect Fullerene-Dye Dyads in Water and Biological Structures

The effect of surface enhanced fluorescence (SEF), which is not observed for individual dyes, is detected when registering surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals from fullerene-dye dyads PFD-Fl and PFD-Ce6. This is consistent with the theory predicting an inverse dependence of SEF fluorescence on the quantum yield of the stationary fluorescence of compounds in solution. The observed effect allows such hybrid molecular structures to be registered by recording SERS or SEF spectra in the 10−7–10−5 M range of concentrations and opens up the possibility of widely using SERS and SEF to study interaction between these fullerene derivatives and biological structures of different organization levels.