SPR (Surface Plasmon Resonance)
The growing need of fast, in situ, reliable and accurate measurements, not only in both the fundamental and applied researches but also in the industry, is urging on researchers to look for new devices, such as those based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR). SPR is used for the measurement of the properties of light waves interacting with nanoscale metal particles or films. Thanks to the peculiarities of optical fibers and their integration into a thermo-stabilized flow cell, plastic optical fiber SPR-based biosensors have recently been proposed as optical technology platforms for chemical and biochemical label-free sensing.
Publications on Intenational Jounals
J1. Aray A, Chiavaioli F, Arjmand M, Trono C, Tombelli S, Giannetti A, Cennamo N, Soltanolkotabi M, Zeni L, Baldini F (in press). “SPR-based plastic optical fibre biosensor for the detection of C-reactive protein in serum.” J. Biophotonics, DOI 10.1002/jbio.201500315.
Abstract: A plastic optical fibre biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance for the detection of C-reactive protein (CRP) in serum is proposed. The biosensor was integrated into a home-made thermo-stabilized microfluidic system that allows avoiding any thermal and/or mechanical fluctuation and maintaining the best stable conditions during the measurements. A working range of 0.006 – 70 mg L–1 and a limit of detection of 0.009 mg L–1 were achieved. These results are among the best compared to other SPR-based biosensors for CRP detection, especially considering that they were achieved in a real and complex medium, i.e. serum. In addition, since the sensor performances satisfy those requested in physiologically-relevant clinical applications, the whole biosensing platform could well address high sensitive, easy to realize, real-time, label-free, portable and low cost diagnosis of CRP for future lab-on-a-chip applications.
J2. Cennamo N, Chiavaioli F, Trono C, Tombelli S, Giannetti A, Baldini F, Zeni L (2016). “A Complete Optical Sensor System Based on a POF-SPR Platform and a Thermo-Stabilized Flow Cell for Biochemical Applications.” Sensors, vol. 16 (2), p. 196 (9pp).
Abstract: An optical sensor platform based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in a plastic optical fiber (POF) integrated into a thermo-stabilized flow cell for biochemical sensing applications is proposed. This device has been realized and experimentally tested by using a classic receptor-analyte assay. For this purpose, the gold surface of the POF was chemically modified through the formation of a self-assembling monolayer. The surface robustness of the POF-SPR platform has been tested for the first time thanks to the flow cell. The experimental results show that the proposed device can be successfully used for label-free biochemical sensing. The final goal of this work is to achieve a complete, small-size, simple to use and low cost optical sensor system. The whole system with the flow cell and the optical sensor are extensively described, together with the experimental results obtained with an immunoglobulin G (IgG)/anti-IgG assay.
