Design and construction of portable localized surface plasmon resonance device for detection of biological molecules

Abstract

Point-of-care devices giving rapid results in non-laboratory settings have become important for biosensor applicattions in a wide range of fields including medical, food, agriculture and pharmaceutical. This work aims to portable device based on localized surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (LSPR-S) as a potential biosensor platform that can be used in non-laboratory settings for rapid detection of biological molecules at hifh sensivity. The thesis can be divided into two parts: In the first part, the design and consctruction of the device including both the mechanical and electronic parts are presented. The mechanical section includes the integration of the parts to build the device and microchannels designed with the aid of a three-dimensional drawing program Solid Works 2015. The second step of the construction process was the installation of electronic components onto the device. The electronicpart consists of a light source, fiber optic cables, a spectrometer and a temperature sensor. In conclusion, a portable LSPR-S device with an integrated microchannel system has been produced, which potentially allows analysing low volumes of sample without the need to label the molecules. The second part of the thesis covers the studies towards the preparation and application of sensing platforms for the LSPR-S device constructed to enable the rapid detection of biplogical molecules at high sensitivity. These included the preparation of gold nanorods and nanoparticles-based LSPR-S detection of model antibody-antigen and bacteria-bacteriophage interactions, respectively. Studies conducted in this section have led to the conclusion that LSPR-S-based biosensor platforms developed in thisis are promising solutions to overcome current challenges in biosensor applications.