Our sensor reaches high sensitivity provided by the recently established large enhancement of vibration signals due to the resonant excitation of the nanoantenna device used as substrates. The aim is to detect only a few proteins with concentration much lower than 1 pM and finally to reach detection threshold such as femtomole or lower. High molecular selectivity is reached with the functionalisation of the nanoantenna. Such functionalisation selectively favours the immobilisation of the protein to be detected at the vicinity of the nanoparticle surface, providing the best enhancement and then the detection of the targeted protein.

Our nanobiosensor includes two main components: the nanoantenna device which corresponds to our sensor transducer and the functionalisation which corresponds to its bioreceptor. And then, each functionalised nanoantenna device used as vibrational signal enhanced system is an individual and specific nanosensor of proteins. As a consequence, our nanobiosensor integrated in a vibrational spectroscope allows the detection and the analysis of the enhanced vibrational signal from the targeted proteins and thus corresponds to our diagnosis instrument.

The nanobiosensor is validated on the detection of proteins on body fluids. These proteins have been chosen since they have been identified as specific biomarkers of common pathologies. This validation is applied to improve their detection (better sensitivity, decrease of the detection threshold) and open the way to the early diagnosis