Large-Scale Cost-Effective Mid-Infrared Resonant Silicon Microstructures for Surface-Enhanced Infrared Absorption Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel, cost-effective, wafer-scale silicon microstructure for mid-infrared bacteria detection, leveraging surface plasmon polaritons for enhanced sensitivity, reusability, and CMOS compatibility.

Contribution

First demonstration of a gold-coated silicon inverted pyramid array for bacteria sensing in the MIR range with enhanced electric-field confinement and detection sensitivity.

Findings

Enhanced detection of E. coli and S. aureus at low concentrations

Cost-effective, wafer-scale fabrication using metal-assisted chemical etching

Device exhibits reusability and reproducibility

Abstract

The mid-infrared region is crucial for elucidating the unique biochemical signatures of microorganisms. The MIR resonant structures turned out to facilitate exceptional performance owing to the enhance electric field confinement in the nano-sized aperture. However, the extension of such technique in bacteria-sensing remains limited, primarily due to its micrometre size. This work is the first demonstration of a MIR resonant structure, the gold-coated micro-structured inverted pyramid array of silicon exhibiting light-trapping capabilities, for the bacteria detection in entire MIR range. The electric-field localization within the micro-sized cavity of inverted pyramid amplifies the light-matter interaction by harnessing surface plasmon polaritons, leading to improved detection sensitivity. The confinement of electric field is further corroborated by electric-field simulations based on finite element method. In particular, we observed notable enhancement in both the quantitative and qualitative detection of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus for the bacteria cell with very low concentration, reflecting the efficacy of our detection method. Furthermore, the cost-effective micro structured silicon is fabricated using metal-assisted chemical etching method with the lithography-free method, along with the capabilities of wafer-scale fabrication. Moreover, our device configuration even demonstrates the characteristics of reusability and reproducibility offers substantial benefits over conventional detection schemes. Consequently, this CMOS technology-compatible biosensor signifies promising ways for the integration of this technology with forthcoming bio-applications.