A Label-Free Biosensor Based on Nanoscale Porous Silicon Thin Film for Tuberculosis Detection

Abstract

Though techniques in medicine develop in a very fast pace, tuberculosis still bothers researchers for its extensive existence. It is urgent to find faster, cheaper and more convenient new ways for diagnosis of tuberculosis. In this paper, we demonstrated a novel serodiagnostic method based on porous silicon thin film. Porous silicon has been proven feasible to function as biosensors in a lot of research. While most serodiagnostic methods are labeled detection, our porous silicon biosensor is a label-free technique. This kind of biosensor is manufactured in a simple way with relatively lower cost while providing an excellent sensitivity and specificity. Through the experiment of LAM antigen and anti-LAM antibody interacting on a porous silicon thin film platform, we proved the feasibility of our new detection approach. Furthermore, we also provided some innovation insights for improving our biosensor which may help it be practically applicable.

Nanosilicon-Based Composites for (Bio)sensing Applications: Current Status, Advantages, and Perspectives

“…Another nano-Si optical response suitable for (bio)molecule detection is reflectance or other optical parameters related to reflectance [22,48,53,55,56,57,58,62,65,67,68,70,71,74,76,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96]. Generally, the (bio)sensor technique based on reflectance response can be performed via reflective index (RI) [71] or optical density [16] (OD) measurements in the initial state and after the addition of the analyte.…”