Microfluidic plasmonic color reading chips and methods

Abstract

There is provided a microfluidic chip for sensing an analyte in a sample by colorimetry. The microfluidic chip comprises: an inlet adapted to receive the sample; an incubation chamber having an incubation chamber inlet fluidly connected to the inlet downstream thereof, to incubate the analyte in the sample; a filter barrier fluidly connected to the incubation chamber, downstream of the incubation chamber inlet; a sensing chamber fluidly connected to the incubation chamber, downstream of the filter barrier, the sensing chamber having a plasmonic nanosurface, the plasmonic nanosurface including nanostructures protruding from the plasmonic nanosurface, the nanostructures having a size that is smaller than that of the diffraction limit of light, the nanostructures having a metallic layer that is plasmon-supported on top of a back reflector layer; and an outlet fluidly connected to the sensing chamber downstream thereof.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.