Researchers have developed a faster and easier way to diagnose certain diseases using a dopamine detector. This dopamine detector utilizes a plasmonic sensor to accelerate the speed of reactions. The sensors also enhance the ability of plasmons to respond to specific analytes (ie dopamine) to speed up those reactions.
"Plasmonic sensors are promising, but they've been poorly explored in the context of the direct biomarker detection using biological samples such as blood—with or without minimal sample preparations," says Abraham Vazquez-Guardado, lead author. "The most important contribution of [our research] is that it demonstrates the feasibility of translating this technology toward biomarker detection."
Plasmonic sensors have been around for almost 20 years. Their research offers a new application of this technology. Their work is published in NanoLetters.