Porous silicon-based aptasensors: The next generation of label-free devices for health monitoring

Aptamers are artificial nucleic acid ligands identified and obtained from combinatorial libraries of synthetic nucleic acids through the in vitro process SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment). Aptamers are able to bind an ample range of non-nucleic acid targets with great specificity and affinity. Devices based on aptamers as bio-recognition elements open up a new generation of biosensors called aptasensors. This review focuses on some recent achievements in the design of advanced label-free optical aptasensors using porous silicon (PSi) as a transducer surface for the detection of pathogenic microorganisms and diagnostic molecules with high sensitivity, reliability and low limit of detection (LoD).