ONE-STEP IMMUNOASSAYS USING INTEGRATED NANOROD ARRAYS FOR RAPID AND SENSITIVE DETECTION OF CANCER BIOMARKERS

We report the integration of Au nanorod arrays with microfluidic chips for rapid and sensitive one-step immunoassays. The nanorods are fabricated through an easy physical deposition method called oblique angle deposition (OAD) without resorting to advanced lithography tools. Leveraging on this platform, we demonstrate detection of cancer biomarkers including prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) with improved sensitivity and shortened assay time. The detection limit of PSA and CEA can reach down to 2.9 pg/mL (similar to 0.1 pM) and 131.4 pg/mL (similar to 1.8 pM), respectively, which corresponds to an enhancement of 1000 and 400 times compared with conventional glass substrates. With high assay performance and simple manufacturing process, this platform has great potentials in application of point-of-care diagnosis.