Special Issue on Gold Nanostructures for Sensing and Diagnostic Applications

Gold nanoparticles(AuNPs) or nanostructures are among one of the most extensively studied valuable nanostructured materials for sensing and diagnostic applications. The versatility of AuNPs can be increased by their modification with chemicals, ligands, and biomolecules to achieve much wider range of  detection limits for over a wide range of target molecules and species,including but not limited to small molecule detection, toxic metal ions, proteins, DNAs, RNAs, viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms. The AuNPs possess many unique properties that are suitable for sensor and diagnostic test development as useful sensors.Millions of lateral flow immunoassay products, such as the home pregnancy testing devices,use gold colloid immune probes in the assay design, with the test results read by observing the red color of the gold colloids. 

In recent years, sensors based on color change, strong Rayleigh scattering and surface-enhanced Raman scattering effect, electrical and catalytic properties of gold nanoparticles have been explored extensively and used in a number of complicated applications, where traditional techniques are either not useful or available. In view of these innovative and intenseR&D efforts, newer materials for developing sensors and diagnostic technologies as well as commercial products are becoming more popular in the biomedical market. 

This special issue is intended to publish novel, high quality, original research articles as well as reviews/short communications focused on Gold Nanostructures for Sensing and Diagnostic Applications. We invite researchers, professors, medical practitioners and scientists from academic community as well as industrial sectors and hospitals to contribute their novel publishable works to this special issue. 

Contributions of all types of articles are free of charge and are not levied on the authors.

Potential possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Novel gold nanoparticle and nanostuctured materials with sensing application potentials
• Fundamental studies leading to better design of new sensors and new diagnostic tests. In particular, understanding between gold nanoparticles and biological systems including cells, tissues, the immune system, blood, blood serum/plasma, and other biological or body fluids
• Gold nanoparticle-based diagnostic tests for point-of-care settings
• New bioassays and sensors for laboratory biomedical research applications
• Sensors and diagnostic tests for infectious diseases and cancer detection and diagnosis
• Assay platform using gold nanoparticle for new drug and pharmaceutical development (Companion diagnostic tests)
• Sensors for environmental pollution detection and monitoring 
• Gold nanoparticle sensors for food safety monitoring
• Sensors and diagnostic tests with agricultural applications

In each of these topics, we would like to receive at least two manuscripts (but not limited) and all articles submitted will go through regular rigorous, plagiarism check, language and the novelty of the subject matter.  

Important Dates

• 1 January 2020: Online submission system will be open for full text submission. 
• 30 April 2020: Deadline for submitting full text (online submission system will be closed).

Guest Editors

• Prof. Qun Treen Huo, University of Central Florida, USA
• Prof. Yen Nee Tan, Newcastle University, UK and Singapore