A compact photometer based on metal-waveguide-capillary: application to detecting glucose of nanomolar concentration

Trace analysis of liquid samples has wide applications in life science and environmental monitor. In this paper, a compact and low-cost photometer based on metal-waveguide-capillary (MWC) was developed for ultra-sensitive absorbance detection. The optical-path can be greatly enhanced and much longer than the physical length of MWC, because the light scattered by the rippled and smooth metal sidewall can be confined inside the capillary regardless of the incident-angle. For the photometer with a 7 cm long MWC, the detection limit is improved ~3000 fold compared with that of commercial spectrophotometer with 1 cm-cuvette, owing to the novel nonlinear optical-path enhancement as well as fast sample switching, and detecting glucose of a concentration as low as 5.12 nM was realized with conventional chromogenic reagent.