Shrinking biophotonic instruments for sensing and imaging using integrated photonics

Optics and photonics already occupy a prominent position in the instrumentation of life sciences. For molecular diagnostics, DNA sequencing, cellular imaging often sensitive optical equipment is deployed. These instruments, however, are often bulky and expensive. In addition, the classical optical schemes do not lend themselves to parallelized detection schemes, as required in high throughput applications. Silicon photonics has seen a remarkable rise in the last decades, allowing indeed to integrate complex optical functionality on a small footprint, including on-chip routing and manipulation of free-space radiation. Life science applications, however, usually require visible wavelengths where silicon is not transparent. We have been developing a back-end CMOS compatible integrated photonics platform for visible applications based on silicon nitride. We will review applications of the platform in molecular sensing, cytometry, spectroscopy and imaging.