Single-cell bacterium identification with a SOI optical microcavity

M. Tardif (1, 2) , J.-B. Jager (2, 3, 4, 5) , P.R. Marcoux (6) , K. Uchiyamada (7) , E. Picard (2) , E. Hadji (2) , D. Peyrade (1)

1 LTM - Laboratoire des technologies de la microélectronique
2 SiNaps - Silicon Nanoelectronics Photonics and Structures
3 INAC - Institut Nanosciences et Cryogénie
4 PHELIQS - PHotonique, ELectronique et Ingénierie QuantiqueS
5 SP2M - UMR 9002 - Service de Physique des Matériaux et Microstructures
6 DACLE-LETI - Département d'Architectures, Conception et Logiciels Embarqués-LETI
7 Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Tsukuba

Photonic crystals and microcavities can act as on-chip nano-optical tweezers for identification or manipulation of biological objects. So far, virus and bacteria optical trapping has been achieved, their presence in the vicinity of the optical resonator being deduced from a shift of the resonant wavelength. Here we show that bacteria can not only be trapped but identified as well if the trapping time is long enough. A silicon on insulator microcavity with a properly tuned quality factor allows to achieve enhanced trapping times. By combining spatial and temporal observation of bacteria-cavity interaction, the optical identification of three different kinds of bacteria is demonstrated.

Domains: Biotechnology; Optics / Photonic; Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics

M. Tardif, J.-B. Jager, P.R. Marcoux, K. Uchiyamada, E. Picard, et al.. Single-cell bacterium identification with a SOI optical microcavity. Applied Physics Letters, 2016, 109 (13), pp.133510. ⟨10.1063/1.4963070⟩. ⟨cea-01988827⟩