Nuclear track-based biosensing: an overview

An overview on the development of biosensors based on nuclear tracks in solids is presented. A few decades ago it was found that nuclear tracks in solids can be usefully applied for the creation of biosensors. Meanwhile quite a number of different strategies have emerged to fulfill this task which are summarized here. We ourselves have especially concentrated on the ‘Product Enrichment Strategy’, where the enrichment of products of a given analyte by a suitable biochemical reaction within the narrow confinement of etched ion tracks is used to amplify the product’s signal for high-sensitivity biosensing. We also report on the application of nuclear analysis techniques for obtaining a deeper insight into these sensor structures, for the sake of their further optimization. Last not least we also discuss competing nanopore-based biosensing approaches.