On-a-chip biosensing based on all-dielectric nanoresonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates on-a-chip biosensing using all-dielectric silicon nanoresonators, achieving clinically relevant sensitivity for prostate cancer marker detection, offering a promising alternative to plasmonic sensors for personalized healthcare.

Contribution

It is the first to showcase biosensing with silicon nanoresonators integrated in microfluidics, providing a low-loss, high-sensitivity platform comparable to plasmonic sensors.

Findings

Successful detection of PSA in human serum

Sensitivity meets clinical requirements

Comparable performance to gold nanorod sensors

Abstract

Nanophotonics has become a key enabling technology in biomedicine with great promises in early diagnosis and less invasive therapies. In this context, the unique capability of plasmonic noble metal nanoparticles to concentrate light on the nanometer scale has widely contributed to biosensing and enhanced spectroscopy. Recently, high-refractive index dielectric nanostructures featuring low loss resonances have been proposed as a promising alternative to nanoplasmonics, potentially offering better sensing performances along with full compatibility with the microelectronics industry. In this letter we report the first demonstration of biosensing with silicon nanoresonators integrated in state-of-the-art microfluidics. Our lab-on-a-chip platform enables detecting Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) cancer marker in human serum with a sensitivity that meets clinical needs. These performances are directly compared with its plasmonic counterpart based on gold nanorods. Our work opens new opportunities in the development of future point-of-care devices towards a more personalized healthcare.