Elosúa Aguado, CésarArregui San Martín, Francisco JavierDel Villar, IgnacioRuiz Zamarreño, CarlosCorres Sanz, Jesús MaríaBariáin Aisa, CándidoGoicoechea Fernández, JavierHernáez Sáenz de Zaitigui, MiguelRivero Fuente, Pedro J.Socorro Leránoz, Abián BentorUrrutia Azcona, AitorSánchez Zábal, PedroZubiate Orzanco, PabloLópez Torres, DiegoAcha Morrás, Nerea deAscorbe Muruzabal, JoaquínOzcariz Celaya, AritzMatías Maestro, Ignacio2018-09-192018-09-1920171424-822010.3390/s17102312https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/30730The measurement of chemical and biomedical parameters can take advantage of the features exclusively offered by optical fibre: passive nature, electromagnetic immunity and chemical stability are some of the most relevant ones. The small dimensions of the fibre generally require that the sensing material be loaded into a supporting matrix whose morphology is adjusted at a nanometric scale. Thanks to the advances in nanotechnology new deposition methods have been developed: they allow reagents from different chemical nature to be embedded into films with a thickness always below a few microns that also show a relevant aspect ratio to ensure a high transduction interface. This review reveals some of the main techniques that are currently been employed to develop this kind of sensors, describing in detail both the resulting supporting matrices as well as the sensing materials used. The main objective is to offer a general view of the state of the art to expose the main challenges and chances that this technology is facing currently.38 p.application/pdfeng© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution.Optical fibre sensorNanotechnologyNanostructured materialsChemical sensingBiomedical sensinginfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess