Enhanced Optical Sensitivity of Polyvinyl Alcohol–Reduced Graphene Oxide Electrospun Nanofiber Coated Etched Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor for Detection of Myoglobin a Cardiac Biomarker

Abstract

Etched fiber Bragg grating (eFBG) sensors have shown to be highly sensitive with the capability of giving accurate real‐time response to a variety of measurands such as pressure, gas, biomolecules, to name a few. These sensors have not shown their mettle as competitive products mainly due to nonreproducibility in results and inefficiency in upscaling for large‐scale production; the main reason being nonuniform and complicated coating procedures. Herein, the enhancement in refractive index (RI) sensitivity (≈4 times) obtained with electrospinning of polyvinyl alcohol–reduced graphene oxide (PVA–rGO) nanofibers onto eFBG sensor using a customized target and a unique sandwich arrangement is demonstrated. The enhancement in RI sensitivity has led to a lower detection limit and increased sensitivity and linear range for a case study using myoglobin (Mb), an early‐stage cardiac biomarker with high reproducible results (standard error ≤±2.3%). rGO embedded PVA nanofiber electrospun onto an eFBG sensor (PVA–rGO sensor) is the first of its kind and has significant importance in developing cost‐effective, label‐free, multianalyte, portable, real‐time, point‐of‐care (POC) kits at ambient conditions.

Keywords

• cardiac biomarkers
• electrospun nanofibers
• enhanced optical sensitivity
• etched fiber Bragg grating sensors
• myoglobin
• polyvinyl alcohol