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Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy for biosensing: a review

Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy for biosensing: a review
Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy for biosensing: a review
Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy (WERS) utilizes simple, robust, high-index contrast dielectric waveguides to generate a strong evanescent field, through which laser light interacts with analytes residing on the surface of the waveguide. It offers a powerful tool for the direct identification and reproducible quantification of biochemical species and an alternative to surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) without reliance on fragile noble metal nanostructures. The advent of low-cost laser diodes, compact spectrometers, and recent progress in material engineering, nanofabrication techniques, and software modeling tools have made realizing portable and cheap WERS Raman systems with high sensitivity a realistic possibility. This review highlights the latest progress in WERS technology and summarizes recent demonstrations and applications. Following an introduction to the fundamentals of WERS, the theoretical framework that underpins the WERS principles is presented. The main WERS design considerations are then discussed, and a review of the available approaches for the modification of waveguide surfaces for the attachment of different biorecognition elements is provided. The review concludes by discussing and contrasting the performance of recent WERS implementations, thereby providing a future roadmap of WERS technology where the key opportunities and challenges are highlighted.
Raman sensor, Raman spectroscopy, SERS, WERS, biosensing, integrated photonics, photonic sensors, surface functionalization, waveguide
2379-3694
2025–2045
Ettabib, Mohamed
71b98cd3-9b2a-4f73-b4c2-0f4b59cacf50
Marti, Almudena
4d2b3dd8-c72a-4f4b-b78e-51849669f5a8
Liu, Zhen
f094fbcf-438a-4789-be24-1a4616bff964
Bowden, Bethany M.
f1ee8521-4661-4517-80b8-6061087124de
Zervas, Michael N.
1840a474-dd50-4a55-ab74-6f086aa3f701
Bartlett, Philip N.
d99446db-a59d-4f89-96eb-f64b5d8bb075
Wilkinson, James S.
73483cf3-d9f2-4688-9b09-1c84257884ca
Ettabib, Mohamed
71b98cd3-9b2a-4f73-b4c2-0f4b59cacf50
Marti, Almudena
4d2b3dd8-c72a-4f4b-b78e-51849669f5a8
Liu, Zhen
f094fbcf-438a-4789-be24-1a4616bff964
Bowden, Bethany M.
f1ee8521-4661-4517-80b8-6061087124de
Zervas, Michael N.
1840a474-dd50-4a55-ab74-6f086aa3f701
Bartlett, Philip N.
d99446db-a59d-4f89-96eb-f64b5d8bb075
Wilkinson, James S.
73483cf3-d9f2-4688-9b09-1c84257884ca

Ettabib, Mohamed, Marti, Almudena, Liu, Zhen, Bowden, Bethany M., Zervas, Michael N., Bartlett, Philip N. and Wilkinson, James S. (2021) Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy for biosensing: a review. ACS Sensors, 6 (6), 2025–2045. (doi:10.1021/acssensors.1c00366).

Record type: Review

Abstract

Waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy (WERS) utilizes simple, robust, high-index contrast dielectric waveguides to generate a strong evanescent field, through which laser light interacts with analytes residing on the surface of the waveguide. It offers a powerful tool for the direct identification and reproducible quantification of biochemical species and an alternative to surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) without reliance on fragile noble metal nanostructures. The advent of low-cost laser diodes, compact spectrometers, and recent progress in material engineering, nanofabrication techniques, and software modeling tools have made realizing portable and cheap WERS Raman systems with high sensitivity a realistic possibility. This review highlights the latest progress in WERS technology and summarizes recent demonstrations and applications. Following an introduction to the fundamentals of WERS, the theoretical framework that underpins the WERS principles is presented. The main WERS design considerations are then discussed, and a review of the available approaches for the modification of waveguide surfaces for the attachment of different biorecognition elements is provided. The review concludes by discussing and contrasting the performance of recent WERS implementations, thereby providing a future roadmap of WERS technology where the key opportunities and challenges are highlighted.

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Waveguide Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy for Biosensing A Review - Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 28 May 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 June 2021
Published date: 25 June 2021
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work was funded by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/R011230/1, “Flexible Raman biosensing platform for low-cost health diagnostics”. M.N.Z. acknowledges financial support from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Z.L. acknowledges financial support from the China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201808430227), and B.M.B thanks the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Contract No. DSTLX-1000128554) for supporting an EPSRC industrial CASE award. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 American Chemical Society. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords: Raman sensor, Raman spectroscopy, SERS, WERS, biosensing, integrated photonics, photonic sensors, surface functionalization, waveguide

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 451347
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/451347
ISSN: 2379-3694
PURE UUID: a007227a-0885-472b-9df7-8b2ef0711357
ORCID for Michael N. Zervas: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0651-4059
ORCID for Philip N. Bartlett: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7300-6900
ORCID for James S. Wilkinson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-1697

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Date deposited: 21 Sep 2021 16:33
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:47

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Contributors

Author: Mohamed Ettabib
Author: Almudena Marti
Author: Zhen Liu
Author: Bethany M. Bowden

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