An eco-friendly disposable plasmonic sensor based on bacterial cellulose and gold

In several application fields, plasmonic sensor platforms combined with bio-receptors are intensively used to obtain biosensors. Most of these commercial devices are based on a disposable chip. Usually a gold chip, functionalized with a specific bio-receptor, inside a costly sensor system, is used. In this work, we propose a low-cost and small-size sensor system, used for monitoring a disposable plasmonic chip, based on an innovative optical waveguide made of bacterial cellulose (BC). In particular, we have sputtered gold on the green slab waveguide that is able to excite localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). Experimental results are presented on the capabilities of using the BC-based composite as an eco-friendly plasmonic sensor platform, which could be exploited for realizing disposable biosensors. The sensor has been used with optical fibers and simple equipment. More specifically, the fibers connect the green disposable LSPR sensor with a light source and with a spectrometer. The novel plasmonic sensing approach has been tested using two different optical waveguide configurations of BC, with and without ions inside BC.