Market Assessment of silicon photonics-based biosensor for disease detection

UBC的研究人员正在开发一种基于低成本固定波长激光器的硅光子多路复用传感器体系结构。与可调谐激光器相比，固定波长1310 nm分布反馈(DFB)激光器要便宜得多(大容量只需1美元)。我们还实现了一种新的技术，使用光子线键合将来自激光器的光耦合到硅光子电路，从而消除了昂贵的透镜和纳米定位硬件。 由于与互补金属氧化物半导体(CMOS)铸造工艺兼容，硅光子集成电路(PIC)可以大批量制造，具有在传感器中集成电子设备的潜力。此外，硅和周围介质之间的高折射率(RI)对比度使小型紧凑型传感器件的开发成为可能，该器件对器件周围逝去场中局部RI的变化很敏感。此外，每个器件约100 x 100微米的紧凑型占地面积允许在一个芯片上制造多个传感器，每个传感器都有自己的化学成分。与现有的瞬息场检测方法相比，多个传感器的多路复用，从而能够在一个芯片上运行多种检测，是基于硅的传感器的最大优势，同时提供了类似的检测极限。这使得可以测量几个目标实体的特定分子特性。例如，在生物传感方面，目标分析物可以在同一芯片上的同一血液样本上，通过适当的对照，分析几种病毒感染。硅光子传感器是实现连续、定量无标记生物传感的优良传感器，可以实时、直接地响应被分析物与受体分子之间的亲和作用。

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.