Topologically integrated photonic biosensor circuits

TL;DR

This paper introduces a topological approach to integrate photonic biosensors on chips, enhancing robustness against disorders and enabling complex, multiplexed biomedical detection.

Contribution

It proposes a novel topological scheme using photonic crystal chips to create robust, integrated biosensor circuits for biomedical applications.

Findings

Topological photonic biosensors are more robust against fabrication disorders.

Edge states enable reliable photon transport in integrated biosensor circuits.

The scheme supports scalable, multiplexed biosensing platforms.

Abstract

Integrated nanophotonic biosensors offer a promising route toward future biomedical detection applications that may enable inexpensive, portable, and sensitive diagnosis of diseases with a small amount of biological samples for convenient early-stage screening of fatal diseases. However, the current photonic biosensor designs are not suitable for highly integrated and multiplexing device architectures that can achieve the detection of complex combinations of many biomarkers. Here, we propose a topological scheme for the integration of miniature biosensors in photonic crystal chips that can meet the above requirement. Using photonic topological edge states as robust one-dimensional waveguides that connect many photonic biosensors, we propose here the topologically integrated photonic biosensor circuits. We demonstrate that the performance of the topologically integrated photonic biosensors is much more robust against disorders than that of the photonic biosensors connected by the normal photonic waveguides, due to the robust transport of photons along the edge channel. Since disorders arising from the fabrication imperfection and the random distribution of the biomarkers are inevitable in genuine devices, resilience against disorders is a necessity for on-chip integration of biosensors. The topological scheme proposed here thus opens a promising path toward reliable integration of photonic biosensors for next-generation biomedical applications.