engleski

Prospective fibre-optic based sensors

The key for successful and fast health recovery is in early disease detection and adequate treatment. The early and accurate detection method of unwanted processes in a living organism requires low molecules number detection and ‘specificity’ in order to accurately distinguish similar species. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers not only ultrasensitive molecular detection, but also a unique ‘fingerprint’ of the specific molecule, which finds applications from diagnostic to analytical chemistry and environmental monitoring. Fibre-optics based SERS probes are a step towards the solution. They preserve ultra- sensitivity and selectivity of common lab- substrates and offer fast, cost-effective, minimally invasive, real-time, in situ and in vivo monitoring especially suitable for out of lab environment. This work shows preliminary results of the fabrication methodology for fibre-optics based sensors which includes fabrication of silicon and zinc-oxide nanowires on silica fibre. Such sensor has shown Rhodamine 6G concentration detection limit of 10-9 M. Furthermore, we have demonstrated Raman signal enhancement with dielectric microspheres which is a step before the technology transfer to SERS substrates.

fibre ; SERS ; nanowires, ZnO, Si

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