Professor Kiriakous said the QUT team developed a rapid testing technique of saliva using paper coated in gold and silver nanoparticles to create a highly sensitive sensor that records the Raman spectrum (or SERS, the process by which a substance scatters laser light which is used to identify molecules) of saliva samples.

“We used a rapid and inexpensive green synthesis with deep UV LED light to chemically link the antibodies to the surface so that we could observe and record the SERS of S100P for the first time,” Professor Kiriakous said.