The following article appeared in Scientific Reports 10 (2020): 16039 and may be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73029-9In this work we report on the characterization and biological functionalization of 2D MoS2 fakes,
epitaxially grown on sapphire, to develop an optical biosensor for the breast cancer biomarker
miRNA21. The MoS2 fakes were modifed with a thiolated DNA probe complementary to the target
biomarker. Based on the photoluminescence of MoS2, the hybridization events were analyzed for the
target (miRNA21c) and the control non-complementary sequence (miRNA21nc). A specifc redshift
was observed for the hybridization with miRNA21c, but not for the control, demonstrating the
biomarker recognition via PL. The homogeneity of these MoS2 platforms was verifed with microscopic
maps. The detailed spectroscopic analysis of the spectra reveals changes in the trion to excitation
ratio, being the redshift after the hybridization ascribed to both peaks. The results demonstrate the
benefts of optical biosensors based on MoS2 monolayer for future commercial devicesThe research is supported by the MINECO (CTQ2017-84309-C2-2-R, CTQ2017-84309-C2-1-R, ELECTROBIONET, RED2018-102412-T) and Comunidad de Madrid (TRANSNANOAVANSENS, P2018/NMT4349) projects. ARC acknowledges Ramón y Cajal program (under contract number RYC-2015-18047
