A label-free fiber ring laser biosensor for ultrahigh sensitivity detection of Salmonella Typhimurium

The rapid detection of low concentrations of Salmonella Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) is an essential preventive measure for food safety and prevention of foodborne illness. The study presented in this paper addresses this critical issue by proposing a single mode-tapered seven core-single mode (STSS) fiber ring laser (FRL) biosensor for S. Typhimurium detection. The experimental results show that the specific detection time of S. Typhimurium is less than 20 min and the wavelength shift can achieve −0.906 nm for an S. Typhimurium solution (10 cells/mL). Furthermore, at a lower concentration of 1 cell/mL applied to the biosensor, a result of −0.183 nm is observed in 9% of samples (1/11), which indicates that the proposed FRL biosensor has the ability to detect 1 cell/mL of S. Typhimurium. In addition, the detection results in chicken and pickled pork samples present an average deviation of −27% and −23%, respectively, from the measured results in phosphate buffered saline. Taken together, these results show the proposed FRL biosensor may have potential applications in the fields of food safety monitoring, medical diagnostics, etc.