Rapid genetic screening with high quality factor metasurfaces

Genetic analysis methods are foundational to advancing personalized medicine, accelerating disease diagnostics, and monitoring the health of organisms and ecosystems. Current nucleic acid technologies such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) rely on sample amplification and can suffer from inhibition. Here, we introduce a label-free genetic screening platform based on high quality (high-Q) factor silicon nanoantennas functionalized with nucleic acid fragments. Each high-Q nanoantenna exhibits average resonant quality factors of 2,200 in physiological buffer. We quantitatively detect two gene fragments, SARS-CoV-2 envelope (E) and open reading frame 1b (ORF1b), with high-specificity via DNA hybridization. We also demonstrate femtomolar sensitivity in buffer and nanomolar sensitivity in spiked nasopharyngeal eluates within 5 minutes. Nanoantennas are patterned at densities of 160,000 devices per cm(2), enabling future work on highly-multiplexed detection. Combined with advances in complex sample processing, our work provides a foundation for rapid, compact, and amplification-free molecular assays. The authors present a high quality factor metasurface that enables sensitive and highly-parallelized detection of biomolecules. Amplification-free detection of gene fragments down to femtomolar levels is demonstrated within 5 minutes, for rapid nucleic acid analysis.

Automated summary

Genetic analysis methods are crucial for personalized medicine, disease diagnostics, and ecosystem monitoring. This study presents a label-free genetic screening platform using high-Q silicon nanoantennas, enabling quantitative and specific detection of gene fragments with femtomolar sensitivity within 5 minutes. The highly-multiplexed detection potential and amplification-free nature of this technology provide a foundation for rapid molecular assays.