Miniaturised diffractive analysis device without the need for marking

"This invention presents relevant advantages against other market bioanalytical approaches allowing a label-free direct measurement in real time. Moreover, the principles of this technology elude contributions of signal due to non-specific adsorptions. This feature facilitates the direct analysis of complex samples as blood, serum, urine, food, and so on. Current commercial bioanalytical technologies allowing label-free detection (SPR, SERS, ¿) involve complex devices and expensive materials, and they do not solve the problem of non-specific adsorption into real samples. Finally, this technology might be carried out in a simple, inexpensive and miniaturized way, so that it introduces interesting advantages for the development of compact bioanalytical devices to perform in situ analysis. The development is composed by a source of light and an optical detector coupled to a waveguide containing a bioreceptor network, and assay zone. The incubation of samples on this network generates changes into the optical parameters of the reflected radiation, and the magnitude of those changes depends on the concentration of the analysed compound into the sample. The target compounds with which the receptors network interact might be metabolites, drugs, medicines, pollutants, biomarkers, pathogens, chemical or biological weapons, allergens, and so on."