The global damage that a widespread viral infection can cause is evident from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The importance of virus detection to prevent the spread of viruses has been reaffirmed by the pandemic and the associated social and economic damage. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in microscale and localized SPR (LSPR) in nanoscale virus sensing systems are thought to be useful as next-generation detection methods. Many studies have been conducted on ultra-sensitive technologies, especially those based on signal amplification. In some cases, it has been reported that even a low viral load can be measured, indicating that the virus can be detected in patients even in the early stages of the viral infection. These findings corroborate that SPR and LSPR are effective in minimizing false-positives and false-negatives that are prevalent in the existing virus detection techniques. In this review, the methods and signal responses of SPR and LSPR-based virus detection technologies are summarized. Furthermore, this review surveys some of the recent developments reported and discusses the limitations of SPR and LSPR-based virus detection as the next-generation detection technologies.
Keywords: biosensing; localized SPR; micro-scale; nanoscale; surface plasmon resonance; virus sensing.