A Versatile Terahertz Chemical Microscope and Its Application for the Detection of Histamine

Abstract

Terahertz waves have gained increasingly more attention because of their unique characteristics and great potential in a variety of fields. In this study, we introduced the recent progress of our versatile terahertz chemical microscope (TCM) in the detection of small biomolecules, ions, cancer cells, and antibody–antigen immunoassaying. We highlight the advantages of our TCM for chemical sensing and biosensing, such as label-free, high-sensitivity, rapid response, non-pretreatment, and minute amount sample consumption, compared with conventional methods. Furthermore, we demonstrated its new application in detection of allergic-related histamine at low concentration in buffer solutions.

Keywords

• terahertz chemical microscope
• potential distribution
• label-free
• biological substances
• cancer cells
• antibody–antigen