An integrated evanescent-field biosensor in silicon

TL;DR

This paper presents a silicon-based evanescent-field biosensor with a fixed-wavelength readout system, enabling portable, multiplexed diagnostics with high sensitivity and reduced size, suitable for decentralized testing.

Contribution

Introduction of a segmented sensor architecture that allows resonance-tracking with a fixed-wavelength laser, reducing cost and size while maintaining high sensitivity.

Findings

Achieved a limit of detection of 6.1 x 10^-5 RIU.

Demonstrated SARS-CoV-2 spike protein detection.

Fixed-wavelength readout performs comparably to tunable lasers.

Abstract

Decentralized diagnostic testing that is accurate, portable, quantitative, and capable of making multiple simultaneous measurements of different biomarkers at the point-of-need remains an important unmet need in the post-pandemic world. Resonator-based biosensors using silicon photonic integrated circuits are a promising technology to meet this need, as they can leverage (1) semiconductor manufacturing economies of scale, (2) exquisite optical sensitivity, and (3) the ability to integrate tens to hundreds of sensors on a millimeter-scale photonic chip. However, their application to decentralized testing has historically been limited by the expensive, bulky tunable lasers and alignment optics required for their readout. In this work, we introduce a segmented sensor architecture that addresses this important challenge by facilitating resonance-tracking readout using a fixed-wavelength laser. The architecture incorporates an in-resonator phase shifter modulated by CMOS drivers to periodically sweep and acquire the resonance peak shifts as well as a distinct high-sensitivity sensing region, maintaining high performance at a fraction of the cost and size. We show, for the first time, that fixed-wavelength sensor readout can offer similar performance to traditional tunable laser readout, demonstrating a system limit of detection of 6.1 x 10-5 RIU as well as immunoassay-based detection of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We anticipate that this sensor architecture will open the door to a new data-rich class of portable, accurate, multiplexed diagnostics for decentralized testing.