Fiber-optic biosensors based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) have the advantages of great biocompatibility, label-free, strong stability, and real-time monitoring of various analytes. LSPR fiber-optic biosensors have attracted extensive research attention in the fields of environmental science, clinical medicine, disease diagnosis, and food safety. The latest development of LSPR fiber-optic biosensors in recent years has focused on the detection of clinical disease markers and the detection of various toxic substances in the environment and the progress of new sensitization mechanisms in LSPR fiber-optic sensors. Therefore, this paper reviews the LSPR fiber-optic sensors from the aspects of working principle, structure, and application fields in biosensors. According to the structure, the sensor can be divided into three categories: traditional ordinary optical fiber, special shape optical fiber, and specialty optical fiber. The advantages and disadvantages of existing and future LSPR fiber-optic biosensors are discussed in detail. Additionally, the prospect of future development of fiber-optic biosensors based on LSPR is addressed.

Blood glucose monitoring is very important for the prevention, control and treatment of diabetes. However, the application of existing glucose sensors is limited by poor bio-compatibility, complex readout approaches, slow response and complex fabrication. Most significantly, most sensors cannot meet the necessities of high-sensitivity and large-range simultaneously. Herein, we proposed a high-selective microprobe glucose optical fiber biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR), which might not solely bring high-sensitivity detection, however additionally cover the concentration range of human glucose. The experimental results demonstrate that the detection range reaches 0-200 mg/dL, and the maximum glucose concentration sensitivity reaches 0.1688 nm/(mg/dL). The limit of detection (LOD) was calculated to be 4 mg/dL. Furthermore, it is verified that the sensor resists the interference of sodium ions, potassium ions, sucrose, chitosan. The designed sensor with the advantage of high-selectivity, high-sensitivity and large-range has great potential for real-time, continuous glucose monitoring in the biological medicine fields.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) hybridization method is one of the most important techniques for detecting new disease genes. However, temperature cross sensitivity is ubiquitously found in the DNA hybridization process, which may cause DNA damage and even produce false positives. An optical DNA hybridization sensor with temperature compensation based on dual surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect by using a gold nanofilm coating optical fiber was proposed and demonstrated. Two parameters of DNA and temperature detection were realized by different functional modifications of the gold nanofilm. Also, a matrix equation was employed to analyze the relationship between two variables. Lung cancer-related genes exon-20 gene fragment was successfully detected in our work. From the theoretical and experimental results, the DNA detection limit was 9 nmol/L, and the temperature sensitivity reaches −1.74 nm/°C. The designed sensor could detect DNA with low concentration and measure temperature at the same time. The proposed sensor has the potential to be applied in disease marker gene detection with temperature compensation.