Etched MMF optical fiber based LMR biosensor for dopamine detection

Dopamine, an important neurotransmitter, can play both excitatory as well as inhibitory role in human body by either exciting the receptors on postsynaptic membrane or by inhibiting or suppressing them. It plays crucial roles in the working of renal, central-nervous, hormonal and cardiovascular system. An elevated level of dopamine results in cardio-toxicity that leads to rapid increase in heart rates, hypertension, drug addiction and heart failure. The low level of dopamine, on the other hand, may cause stress, depression, ailments such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and many more. Thus, monitoring of dopamine measures in body in real time is vital for observing its impact on biological process and mechanism. In this work, a straightforward and efficient sensor model is proposed to detect the presence of dopamine in human body. Etched optical fiber with an overlayer of one of the most promising 2D material-graphene oxide (GO) is used for developing the sensor with the lossy mode resonance (LMR) approach. The sensor probe was analyzed for its performance in terms of stability. The experimental results show that the proposed etched LMR biosensor has immense capacity to sense the presence of dopamine in human and thus have significant application in real time detection and monitoring of dopamine.