Optical Microfibre Based Photonic Components and Their Applications in Label-Free Biosensing

Abstract

Optical microfibre photonic components offer a variety of enabling properties, including large evanescent fields, flexibility, configurability, high confinement, robustness and compactness. These unique features have been exploited in a range of applications such as telecommunication, sensing, optical manipulation and high Q resonators. Optical microfibre biosensors, as a class of fibre optic biosensors which rely on small geometries to expose the evanescent field to interact with samples, have been widely investigated. Due to their unique properties, such as fast response, functionalization, strong confinement, configurability, flexibility, compact size, low cost, robustness, ease of miniaturization, large evanescent field and label-free operation, optical microfibres based biosensors seem a promising alternative to traditional immunological methods for biomolecule measurements. Unlabeled DNA and protein targets can be detected by monitoring the changes of various optical transduction mechanisms, such as refractive index, absorption and surface plasmon resonance, since a target molecule is capable of binding to an immobilized optical microfibre. In this review, we critically summarize accomplishments of past optical microfibre label-free biosensors, identify areas for future research and provide a detailed account of the studies conducted to date for biomolecules detection using optical microfibres.

Micro/Nanofibre Optical Sensors: Challenges and Prospects

“…Besides the above-mentioned techniques, CO 2 laser beams and electrical heaters have also been used for taper drawing glass or polymer MNFs, and glass MNFs have also been fabricated by local melting or chemical etching [ 38 ]. For more details of MNF fabrication, there have been a number of studies in recent literatures [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 38 ].…”

“…As a combination of fibre optics and nanotechnology, mocro-/nanostructurization of optical fibres has been an important trend for exploring fibre-optic sensing technology on the micro or nanoscale [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. It is obvious that, reducing the size of a sensing structure is usually an essential step to bestow the sensor with higher sensitivity, faster response, lower power consumption and better spatial resolution, and the optical micro/nanofibre (MNF) became one of the best candidates for this purpose.…”

“…In recent years, rapid progress has been made in the field of MNF-based optical sensors, as have been summarized in a number of books and review articles [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. In this tutorial, besides the basic introduction to MNF optics for optical sensors, we will review the up-to-date progresses in this field, and some of their closely related techniques.…”

A Review of Multimode Interference in Tapered Optical Fibers and Related Applications

“…Several biosensors based on optical fiber structure have been proposed previously [ 129 , 130 , 131 ]. Recently, the development of TOF provides a potential for high-sensitivity and fast-response biosensors [ 132 , 133 ]. In this sub-section an MFC-structure-based label-free biosensor is presented.…”

Aryl Diazonium Chemistry for the Surface Functionalization of Glassy Biosensors

“…Such biosensors typically integrate a bio-recognition probe with a transduction system, as well as electronic systems such as signal amplifiers, processors, and display. Transduction platforms, such as quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ], micromechanical resonators [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], flow cytometry [ 18 , 31 , 32 , 33 ], amperometry [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ], surface plasmon resonance (SPR) [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ], and planar optical waveguides [ 47 , 48 , 49 ], have been investigated. In turn, numerous biological probes such as DNA [ 50 ], RNA [ 51 ], monoclonal [ 52 , 53 ] polyclonal antibodies [ 54 ], bacteriophages [ 35 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ] and their binding proteins [ 58 , 60 ] have been leveraged to impart specificity to the transduction.…”