Optical Detection of the Viruses by Gold Nanoparticles (AuNPs)

Viruses are dangerous pathogenic biological agents as they are highly infectious, very small in size, and have no real cure. Thus, early detection is the crucial step in defense against such threats. The optical biosensor is one of the appropriate approaches to the detection of viruses. An optical biosensor is a compact analytical device that contains a biorecognition sensing element integrated with an optical transducer system. This review is aimed at reporting the basic concept of optical biosensors with the recent biomedical applications of its varied forms briefly. Also, this paper focuses on the gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) based on optical biosensors and their few forms. Further, we discuss the varied forms of AuNPs-based biosensors in detecting various viruses in recent decades. This study has presented some recent achievements of AuNPs-based optical biosensors in virus detection in the last decade. Also, we have discussed some challenges being faced by the optical sensors and also their future prospects.