Abstract

Advanced Optofluidic Devices for Point-of-Care Molecular Diagnostics

Holger Schmidt, Narinder Kapany Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of California-Santa Cruz

Ultrasensitive and compact instruments with low complexity are highly desirable for real-time point-of-care disease detection. I will describe liquid-core waveguide optofluidic devices for both fluorescence and label-free detection of SARS-CoV-2 from clinical nasal swab samples with single molecule sensitivity. Multiplex detection of single viral antigens is demonstrated along with dual detection of viral DNA and antigen as well as label-free nanopore sensing of single RNAs with 2,000x enhanced detection rate. I will also discuss strategies for implementing optimized particle recognition algorithms and real-time analysis of weak fluorescence signals from single molecules.