Critical assessment of relevant methods in the field of biosensors with direct optical detection based on fibers and waveguides using plasmonic, resonance, and interference effects

Direct optical detection has proven to be a highly interesting tool in biomolecular interaction analysis to be used in drug discovery, ligand/receptor interactions, environmental analysis, clinical diagnostics, screening of large data volumes in immunology, cancer therapy, or personalized medicine. In this review, the fundamental optical principles and applications are reviewed. Devices are based on concepts such as refractometry, evanescent field, waveguides modes, reflectometry, resonance and/or interference. They are realized in ring resonators; prism couplers; surface plasmon resonance; resonant mirror; Bragg grating; grating couplers; photonic crystals, Mach-Zehnder, Young, Hartman interferometers; backscattering; ellipsometry; or reflectance interferometry. The physical theories of various optical principles have already been reviewed in detail elsewhere and are therefore only cited. This review provides an overall survey on the application of these methods in direct optical biosensing. The “historical” development of the main principles is given to understand the various, and sometimes only slightly modified variations published as “new” methods or the use of a new acronym and commercialization by different companies. Improvement of optics is only one way to increase the quality of biosensors. Additional essential aspects are the surface modification of transducers, immobilization strategies, selection of recognition elements, the influence of non-specific interaction, selectivity, and sensitivity. Furthermore, papers use for reporting minimal amounts of detectable analyte terms such as value of mass, moles, grams, or mol/L which are difficult to compare. Both these essential aspects (i.e., biochemistry and the presentation of LOD values) can be discussed only in brief (but references are provided) in order to prevent the paper from becoming too long. The review will concentrate on a comparison of the optical methods, their application, and the resulting bioanalytical quality.