Flexible Plasmonic Biosensors for Healthcare Monitoring: Progress and Prospects

Abstract

The noble metal nanoparticle has been widely utilized as a plasmonic unit to enhance biosensors, by leveraging its electric and/or optical properties. Integrated with the “flexible” feature, it further enables opportunities in developing healthcare products in a conformal and adaptive fashion, such as wrist pulse tracers, body temperature trackers, blood glucose monitors, etc. In this work, we present a holistic review of the recent advance of flexible plasmonic biosensors for the healthcare sector. The technical spectrum broadly covers the design and selection of a flexible substrate, the process to integrate flexible and plasmonic units, the exploration of different types of flexible plasmonic biosensors to monitor human temperature, blood glucose, ions, gas, and motion indicators, as well as their applications for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and colorimetric detections. Their fundamental working principles and structural innovations are scoped and summarized. The challenges and prospects are articulated regarding the critical importance for continued progress of flexible plasmonic biosensors to improve living quality.

Etched-spiky Au@Ag plasmonic-superstructure monolayer films for triple amplification of surface-enhanced Raman scattering signals

“…Additionally, the spiky Au@Ag NPs were prepared and tailored according to the distinguished chemical wet method. 35 The TEM images (Fig. S4, ESI †), energy dispersive spectroscopy (Fig.…”

“…In recent years, our group has devoted itself to constructing macroscopic and uniform NPs monolayer films 32,33 and investigated their functional applications for SERS detection. 34,35 Thus, leveraging interfacial assembly for obtaining scale-up and uniform 2D NP arrays, both sensitivity and stability are heightened in our 2D plasmonic SERS sensing platform (Fig. 1b).…”

Machine learning for rapid quantification of trace analyte molecules using SERS and flexible plasmonic paper substrates

“…17 Flexible SERS substrates have gained enormous attention owing to their low fabrication cost, ease of use, and biodegradability. [18][19][20][21] Some of the properties of the exible substrates such as elasticity and porosity add to the improvement of the SERS phenomena itself thus enhancing the efficacy of the process. Among all, lter paper (FP) has gained huge attention because of its cheap and sustainable nature as a SERS substrate for different analytes.…”

Nanomaterial-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy for sensing and diagnostics of gas molecules in environment and healthcare

“…Furthermore, its applications in environmental control and healthcare have been explored. It is to be noted that there are a few reviews seems to be similar but these are entirely different because all are focused on a particular theme either on healthcare (mainly on a particular disease or materials) or environment related (on a particular problem) [73][74][75][76][77][78]. The proposed article is focused on the environmental and healthcare applications including the pandemic COVID-19 problem and solution with potential of commercialization scientific solution because of its portability and simple handling ability as compared to the traditional sensor/biosensors/environmental sensors.…”