Ultrasensitive Glucose Biosensor Using Micro-Nano Interface of Tilted Fiber Grating Coupled with Biofunctionalized Au Nanoparticles

Monitoring glucose levels is one of the main diagnostic methods for preventing and treating diabetes. Conventionally monitoring of blood glucose through a finger-stick procedure brings pain. It is essential to develop biosensors for low concentration glucose detection in non-invasive samples. In this paper, a tilted fiber grating based localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) biosensor for ultrasensitive glucose detection has been demonstrated. The glucose biosensor was fabricated by immobilization of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) onto an excessively tilted fiber grating (Ex-TFG) and subsequent biofunctionalization by coating polydopamine and concanavalin A onto the AuNPs/Ex-TFG surface. The biosensor has the response regions covering low, middle and high glucose concentrations. The resonance peak indicates a redshift of 0.24 nm, 0.06 nm and 0.48 nm in the concentration ranges of 1.0 nM–1.0 μM, 1.0 μM–50.0 μM and 50.0 μM–5.0 mM, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) of the biosensor in pure phosphate buffered saline is 2.5 nM. The high sensitivity and specific selectivity for D-glucose detection are attributed to strong coupling between the evanescent fields from transverse magnetic (TM) cladding modes of the Ex-TFG and the localized electric fields from LSPR of the AuNPs and their biofunctionalization, and resulting in remarkable enhancement of localized effective refractive index with slightly increased D-glucose concentration. Especially, the glucose biosensor based on the Ex-TFG coupled with the biofunctionalized AuNPs, has been demonstrated to be of practical utility to detect the glucose in artificial urine, which has potential applications in non-invasive glucose monitoring for early diagnosis and better management of diabetes.