Plasmonic Sensor Monolithically Integrated with a CMOS Photodiode

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology has made personal mobile computing and communications an everyday part of life. In this paper we present a nanophotonic integrated CMOS-based biosensor that will pave the way for future personalized medical diagnostics. To achieve our aim, we have monolithically integrated plasmonic nanostructures with a CMOS photodiode. Following this approach of monolithic nanophotonics−microelectronics integration, we have successfully developed a miniaturized nanophotonic sensor system with direct electrical readout, which eliminates the need of bulky and costly equipment that is presently used for interrogation of nanophotonic sensors. The optical sensitivity of the plasmonic nanostructures is measured to be 275 nm/ refractive index unit (RIU), which translates to an electrical sensitivity of 5.8 V/RIU in our integrated sensor system. This advance is the first demonstration of monolithic integration of nanophotonic structures with CMOS detectors and is a crucial step toward translating laboratory based nanophotonic sensing systems to portable, low-cost, and digital formats.