A minireview on nanoparticle-based sensors for the detection of coronaviruses

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a class of viruses that cause respiratory tract infections in birds and mammals. Severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome are pathogenic human viruses. The ongoing coronavirus causing a pandemic of COVID-19 is a recently identified virus from this group. The first step in the control of spreading the disease is to detect and quarantine infected subjects. Consequently, the introduction of rapid and reliable detection methods for CoVs is crucial. To date, several methods were reported for the detection of coronaviruses. Nanoparticles play an important role in detection tools, thanks to their high surface-to-volume ratio and exclusive optical property enables the development of susceptible analytical nanoparticle-based sensors. The studies performed on using nanoparticles-based (mainly gold) sensors to detect CoVs in two categories of optical and electrochemical were reviewed here. Details of each reported sensor and its relevant analytical parameters are carefully provided and explained.