Normal-incidence type solution immersed silicon (SIS) biosensor for ultra-sensitive, label-free detection of cardiac troponin I.

Abstract Early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) significantly reduce the mortality rate and can be achieved via high-sensitive detection of AMI specific cardiac troponin I (cTnI) biomarker. Here, we present normal-incident type solution-immersed silicon (NI–SIS) ellipsometric biosensor, designed for ultra-high sensitive, high-throughput, label-free detection of the target protein. The NI–SIS sensors are equipped with a specially designed prism that maintains the angle of incidence close to the Brewster angle during operation, which significantly reduces SIS noise signals induced by the refractive index fluctuations of the surrounding medium, improves the signal-to-noise ratio, in-results lowers the detection limit. We applied NI–SIS biosensor for ultra-sensitive detection of cTnI biomarkers in human serum. The optimized sensor chip fabrication and detection operation procedures are proposed. The wide linear concentration ranges of fg/mL to ng/mL is achieved with the detection limit of 22.0 fg/mL of cTnI. The analytical correlation was assessed by linear regression analysis with the results of the Pathfast reference system. These impressive biosensing capabilities of NI–SIS technology have huge potentials for accurate detection of target species in different application areas, such as diagnosis, drug discovery, and food contaminations.