Sensitive and Specific Detection of Carcinoembryonic Antigens Using Toroidal Metamaterial Biosensors Integrated with Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a biomarker that is highly expressed in cancer patients. Label-free, highly sensitive, and specific detection of CEA biomarkers can therefore greatly aid in the early detection and screening of cancer. This study presents a toroidal metamaterial biosensor integrated with functionalized gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) that demonstrated highly sensitive and specific detection of CEA using terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy. In the biosensor, a closed-loop magnetic field formed an electrical confinement, resulting in a high sensitivity (287.8 GHz/RIU) and an ultrahigh quality factor (15.04). In addition, the integrated AuNPs with high refractive indices significantly enhanced the sensing performance of the biosensor. To explore the quantitative and qualitative detection of CEA, CEA biomarkers with various concentrations and four types of proteins were measured by the designed biosensor, achieving a limit of detection of 0.17 ng and high specificity. Even more significant, the proposed AuNP-integrated THz toroidal metamaterial biosensor demonstrates exceptional potential for use in technologies for cancer diagnosis and monitoring.