Abstract
High sensitivity and quantitative detection of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein (S protein) is of great significance for the diagnosis and treatment of coronaviruses. Here, we utilized terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) integrated with a metamaterial (MM)-based biosensor and biological modification technology to demonstrate a high accuracy and label-free detection of the SARS-CoV-2 S1 protein by comparing the changes of the dielectric environment before and after binding the S1 protein. To confirm the sensing characteristics observed in the experiments and provide a further insight into the sensing mechanisms, we performed numerical simulations through varying the thickness, quantity, position, and refractive index of analyte aggregates. The sensitivity increases with the increase of the number of gaps and the amount of analyte near the gaps, which convincingly proves that the frequency shift and sensing performance are strongly influenced by the field enhancement and near-field coupling at the gap area.
Highlights
Spike protein is a kind of structural protein with spines on the surface of coronaviruses, which is known as S protein and contains information on the pathogenic mechanism, source, treatment method, and pathogenicity of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]
It is of great significance to detect the trace SARS-CoV-2 S1 protein for the diagnosis and treatment of coronaviruses
We find that the three splits are crucial to the sensitivity enhancement of the proposed MM sensor due to the field localization and the near-field coupling between two terminals
Summary
Spike protein is a kind of structural protein with spines on the surface of coronaviruses, which is known as S protein and contains information on the pathogenic mechanism, source, treatment method, and pathogenicity of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. It is of great significance to detect the trace SARS-CoV-2 S1 protein for the diagnosis and treatment of coronaviruses. Great advancements have been made to achieve the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, including reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and the antibody detection method [6–11]. Based on the known RNA sequence of the virus, the RT-PCR technique can be used to convert the viral RNA in the nasal or the throat into DNA, and the DNA concentration will be subsequently amplified and detectable. This method has a high accuracy but it is timeconsuming, which usually takes 5 h to obtain the results. It is highly desired to develop innovative high sensitivity and specific
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