Hollow-Core-Photonic-Crystal-Fiber-Based Miniaturized Sensor for the Detection of Aggregation-Induced-Emission Molecules

A miniature sensor for detection of aggregation-induced emission (ME) molecules is proposed in this work. The sensing head is fabricated by use of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber with a core diameter of about 4.8 mu m. The cladding holes are sealed with a fusion splicing technique, and the central hole remains open to allow the filtration of solution with AIE molecules. When the solution is excited by an ultraviolet lamp, the fluorescence is received by a fiber-optic spectrometer. The fluorescence intensity is associated with the concentration of ME molecules and the infiltrated-core length. In the whole process of the experiments, the output-peak wavelength is stable, which indicates that the existing forms of ME particles are stable, and the fluorescence reabsorption can be neglected. The experimental results obtained are in accordance with traditional microplate-spectrophotometer methods. The most exciting result is that the amount of sample measured can be as low as 0.36 nL, which allows the detection of AIE molecules at only 0.02 pmol. In addition, the miniature sensor was successfully applied to the detection of an ME-based bioprobe for evaluating the activity of the dipeptidyl-peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitor sitagliptin with an IC50 of 59.80 +/- 3.06 nM. The advantages of small device size and nanoliter-scale sample volumes suggest that the proposed sensor is promising for many biosensing applications.