Gold Innovations Blog

I’ve blogged a couple of times now about the use of gold in sensors and diagnostic devices, and have started developing a real interest in the field as a whole. I recently attended an excellent online seminar, organised by the Sensors and Instrumentation Knowledge Transfer Network, which was given by Agata Jozwicka who is a senior analyst from Frost & Sullivan. Agata presented a lot of data about the sensor field, and the opportunities generated by the ongoing miniaturisation of the technologies from macro- to micro- to nano-. I was particularly interested to see the percentage revenues generated by the various sensor types – biosensors commanded the largest single proportion of the market at ~14%, and that area of the sensor landscape is growing at 9-10% per annum. To me this shows there is real market interest and value in the area.

This observation is undoubtedly enforced by my ongoing monitoring of the literature. Nano-sensor papers are consistantly being published in some of the world’s leading journals. Only this week another gold-based sensors paper appeared in Nature Materials. The team, made up of researchers from Europe, America and Canada, have demonstrated an improvement in biosensing technology using a gold metamaterial that is capable of supporting a guided mode in a porous nanorod layer. Using this device and various optical techniques, sensors can determine very precisely the identity and amount of various substances, including extremely small compounds such as drugs, vitamins or hormones.