Overview of Recent Advances in the Design of Plasmonic Fiber-Optic Biosensors

Plasmonic fiber-optic biosensors combine the flexibility and compactness of optical fibers and high sensitivity of nanomaterials to their surrounding medium, to detect biological species such as cells, proteins, and DNA. Due to their small size, accuracy, low cost, and possibility of remote and distributed sensing, plasmonic fiber-optic biosensors are promising alternatives to traditional methods for biomolecule detection, and can result in significant advances in clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, food process control, disease, and environmental monitoring. In this review article, we overview the key plasmonic fiber-optic biosensing design concepts, including geometries based on conventional optical fibers like unclad, side-polished, tapered, and U-shaped fiber designs, and geometries based on specialty optical fibers, such as photonic crystal fibers and tilted fiber Bragg gratings. The review will be of benefit to both engineers in the field of optical fiber technology and scientists in the fields of biosensing.