Silicon photonic biosensors

The study critically reviews the silicon-based microphotonic biosensors for biomedical applications. In particular, integrated optical devices and their advantages, in terms of high performance and compactness, and also high reliability and long life term, are reported. These features, together with the complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatibility of the silicon technology, since the last few years, have been allowing to realise high-efficiency biosensing platforms with on-chip integration of several biosensors for a multi-analyte detection. Many lab-on-chip systems integrated into portable medical instruments have been proposed in the literature and some of them already commercialised in the worldwide market, so attaining extraordinary improvements in the early detection and monitoring of several diseases. Therefore, fast and accurate self-tests achievable with silicon photonic biosensors are remarkably opening new possibilities and applications in the healthcare industry.