Biophotonic sensors with integrated Si3N4-organic hybrid (SiNOH) lasers for point-of-care diagnostics

Abstract

Early and efficient disease diagnosis with low-cost point-of-care devices is gaining importance for personalized medicine and public health protection. Within this context, waveguide-(WG)-based optical biosensors on the silicon-nitride (Si3N4) platform represent a particularly promising option, offering highly sensitive detection of indicative biomarkers in multiplexed sensor arrays operated by light in the visible-wavelength range. However, while passive Si3N4-based photonic circuits lend themselves to highly scalable mass production, the integration of low-cost light sources remains a challenge. In this paper, we demonstrate optical biosensors that combine Si3N4 sensor circuits with hybrid on-chip organic lasers. These Si3N4-organic hybrid (SiNOH) lasers rely on a dye-doped cladding material that are deposited on top of a passive WG and that are optically pumped by an external light source. Fabrication of the devices is simple: The underlying Si3N4 WGs are structured in a single lithography step, and the organic gain medium is subsequently applied by dispensing, spin-coating, or ink-jet printing processes. A highly parallel read-out of the optical sensor signals is accomplished with a simple camera. In our proof-of-concept experiment, we demonstrate the viability of the approach by detecting different concentrations of fibrinogen in phosphate-buffered saline solutions with a sensor-length (L-)-related sensitivity of S/L = 0.16 rad nM−1 mm−1. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an integrated optical circuit driven by a co-integrated low-cost organic light source. We expect that the versatility of the device concept, the simple operation principle, and the compatibility with cost-efficient mass production will make the concept a highly attractive option for applications in biophotonics and point-of-care diagnostics.