Optical Readout of Gold Nanoparticle-Based DNA Microarrays without Silver Enhancement

We present a novel readout scheme for gold nanoparticle-based DNA microarrays relying on “Laser-Induced Scattering around a NanoAbsorber”. It provides direct counting of individual nanoparticles present on each array spot and stable signals, without any silver enhancement. Given the detection of nanometer-sized particles, which minimize the steric hindrance, the linear dynamic range of the method is particularly large and well suited for microarray detection.