Flattened fiber-optic ATR sensor enhanced by silver nanoparticles for glucose measurement.

This paper proposes a novel fiber attenuated total reflection (ATR) sensor with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) on the flattened structure based on mid-infrared spectroscopy for detecting low concentration of glucose with high precision. The flattened structure was designed to add the effective optical path length to improve the sensitivity. AgNPs were then deposited on the surface of the flattened area of the fiber via chemical silver mirror reaction for further improving the sensitivity by enhancing the infrared absorption. Combining the AgNPs modified flattened fiber ATR sensor with a CO laser showed a strong mid-infrared glucose absorption, with an enhancement factor of 4.30. The glucose concentration could be obtained by a five-variable partial least-squares model with a root-mean-square error of 4.42 mg/dL, which satisfies clinical requirements. Moreover, the fiber-based technique provides a pretty good method to fabricate miniaturized ATR sensors that are suitable to be integrated into a microfluidic chip for continuous glucose monitoring with high sensitivity.