This article presents a concise summary of current advancements in novel nanomaterial-based optical fiber biosensors. The beneficial optical and biological properties of nanomaterials, such as nanoparticle size-dependent signal amplification, plasmon resonance, and charge-transfer capabilities, are widely used in biosensing applications. Due to the biocompatibility and bioreceptor combination, the nanomaterials enhance the sensitivity, limit of detection, specificity, and response time of sensing probes, as well as the signal-to-noise ratio of fiber optic biosensing platforms. This has established a practical method for improving the performance of fiber optic biosensors. With the aforementioned outstanding nanomaterial properties, the development of fiber optic biosensors has been efficiently promoted. This paper reviews the application of numerous novel nanomaterials in the field of optical fiber biosensing and provides a brief explanation of the fiber sensing mechanism.

This article discusses optically active nanomaterials and their optical biosensing applications. In addition to enhancing their sensitivity, these nanomaterials also increase their biocompatibility. For this reason, nanomaterials, particularly those based on their chemical compositions, such as carbon-based nanomaterials, inorganic-based nanomaterials, organic-based nanomaterials, and composite-based nanomaterials for biosensing applications are investigated thoroughly. These nanomaterials are used extensively in the field of fiber optic biosensing to improve response time, detection limit, and nature of specificity. Consequently, this article describes contemporary and application-based research that will be of great use to researchers in the nanomaterial-based optical sensing field. The difficulties encountered during the synthesis, characterization, and application of nanomaterials are also enumerated, and their future prospects are outlined for the reader’s benefit.

Optical fiber sensors based on surface plasma technology have many unique advantages in specific applications such as extreme environmental monitoring, physical parameter determination, and biomedical indicators testing. In recent decades, various kinds of fiber probes with special structures were developed according to special processing such as tapering, splicing, etching, fiber balls, grating etc. In this paper, the fabrication technology, characteristics, development status and application scenarios of different special optical fiber structures are briefly reviewed, including common processing equipment. Furthermore, many special novel optical fiber structures reported in recent years are summarized, which have been used in various kinds of plasmonic sensing work. Then, the fiber-plasmonic sensors for practical applications are also introduced and examined in detail. The main aim of this review is to provide guidance and inspiration for researchers to design and fabricate special optical fiber structures, thus facilitating their further research.