Minimalistic design and rapid-fabrication single-mode fiber biosensors: Review and perspectives

Optical fiber biosensors are receiving significant interest, as they allow real-time, low-limit, and high precision detection of biological analytes such as biomarkers, proteins, and small cells. Classical biosensor designs include gratings, interferometers, and plasmonic structures; however, these systems require a complex design, hard to manufacture on high volumes. Recently, several biosensors having a minimalistic design, rapid and suitable to be automated, have been proposed; the key asset is the scalability potential, in view of fabricating numerous devices for disposable use or for large parallel immunoassays. This new sensor class features reflector-less sensors, shallow tapers, and ball resonators; a pseudo-random spectrum characterizes all these biosensors. In this paper, we provide a bird-eye view of these minimalistic designs and a perspective of their use in advanced biosensing applications.