Disposable silicon-based all-in-one micro-qPCR for apid on-site detection of pathogens

Rapid screening and low-cost diagnosis play a crucial role in choosing the correct course of intervention when dealing with highly infectious pathogens. This is especially important if the disease-causing agent has no effective treatment, such as the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and shows no or similar symptoms to other common infections. Here, we report a disposable silicon-based integrated Point-of-Need transducer (TriSilix) for real-time quantitative detection of pathogen-specific sequences of nucleic acids. TriSilix can be produced at wafer-scale in a standard laboratory (37 chips of 10x10x0.65mm in size can be produced in 7h, costing similar to 0.35 USD per device). We are able to quantitatively detect a 563bp fragment of genomic DNA of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis through real-time PCR with a limit-of-detection of 20fg, equivalent to a single bacterium, at the 35(th) cycle. Using TriSilix, we also detect the cDNA from SARS-CoV-2 (1pg) with high specificity against SARS-CoV (2003).