Light: Science & Applications (Dec 2023)

Submonolayer biolasers for ultrasensitive biomarker detection

  • Chaoyang Gong,
  • Xi Yang,
  • Shui-Jing Tang,
  • Qian-Qian Zhang,
  • Yanqiong Wang,
  • Yi-Ling Liu,
  • Yu-Cheng Chen,
  • Gang-Ding Peng,
  • Xudong Fan,
  • Yun-Feng Xiao,
  • Yun-Jiang Rao,
  • Yuan Gong

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-023-01335-8
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Abstract Biomarker detection is key to identifying health risks. However, designing sensitive and single-use biosensors for early diagnosis remains a major challenge. Here, we report submonolayer lasers on optical fibers as ultrasensitive and disposable biosensors. Telecom optical fibers serve as distributed optical microcavities with high Q-factor, great repeatability, and ultralow cost, which enables whispering-gallery laser emission to detect biomarkers. It is found that the sensing performance strongly depends on the number of gain molecules. The submonolayer lasers obtained a six-order-of-magnitude improvement in the lower limit of detection (LOD) when compared to saturated monolayer lasers. We further achieve an ultrasensitive immunoassay for a Parkinson’s disease biomarker, alpha-synuclein (α-syn), with a lower LOD of 0.32 pM in serum, which is three orders of magnitude lower than the α-syn concentration in the serum of Parkinson’s disease patients. Our demonstration of submonolayer biolaser offers great potentials in high-throughput clinical diagnosis with ultimate sensitivity.