Market Assessment of silicon photonics-based biosensor for disease detection

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UBC researchers are developing a silicon photonic multiplexed sensor architecture that is based on a low-cost fixed-wavelength laser. In contrast to tunable lasers, fixed wavelength 1310 nm distributed feedback (DFB) lasers are much cheaper ($1 in high volume). We have also implemented a novel technique to use photonic wirebonding to couple the light from the laser to the silicon photonic circuit, thereby removing the expensive lenses and nanopositioning hardware. Due to the compatibility with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) foundry processes, silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can be manufactured at high volume, with the potential for integrating electronics within the sensor. Moreover, the high refractive index (RI) contrast between silicon and the surrounding media enables the development of miniaturized compact sensing devices, sensitive to changes in the local RI within the evanescent field surrounding the device. Furthermore, a compact footprint of approximately 100 x 100 micron per device permits the fabrication of multiple sensors on one single chip, with each sensor having its own chemistry. Multiplexing many sensors, thereby being able to run multiple assays on a single chip, is the biggest advantage of silicon-based sensors over existing evanescent field detection methods, while offering a comparable limit of detection. This allows for measurements of several target entities for their specific molecular properties. For example, in biosensing, target analytes can be analyzed for several viral infections, with suitable controls, on the same sample of blood on the same chip. Silicon photonic sensors are excellent transducers for continuous and quantitative label-free biosensing, which can directly respond to affinity interactions between analyte and receptor molecules in real-time.