Artificial Receptor Enabled Interferometric Sensing Platform for Selective Melamine Detection

Abstract Food adulterants due to harmful chemicals refer to a serious global concern for food safety and people’s health, which makes the detection and monitoring of food quality essential nowadays. Optical sensors with high sensitivity, reconfigurability, and stability have played an important role in advancing biochemical sensors for the selective detection of target food adulterants. However, many of these sensors suffer from limited selectivity and are less sensitive to external stimuli. Hence, these limitations are overcome by an efficient approach for developing a compact, highly sensitive biosensing system that can be achieved by combining optical fiber-based interferometry with an artificial recognition element. Here, a biosensor has been developed for detecting toxic food adulterant melamine by functionalizing an inline interferometric transducer with MIP. The sensor has a broad detection range of 10–10 M to 10–3 M concentration of melamine sample solution with a sensitivity of 8.8 × 109 nm/M. The sensor offers a remarkable LOD of 6.4 pM for the melamine sample. The proposed sensor facilitates a significant working potential for several practical applications, including food safety inspections, clinical sectors, and manufacturing industries.