Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
Porous silicon waveguides with integrated porous silicon grating couplers are demonstrated as small molecule biosensors. Two fabrication methods are presented for the grating couplers: standard electron beam lithography with reactive ion etching and a new technique based on direct imprinting of porous substrates. Although the gratings fabricated using standard lithographic techniques have steeper sidewalls and enable a larger available sensing surface area inside the waveguide, the imprinted gratings have the advantage of rapid and low-cost fabrication. Both the lithographically and imprinted sensors are shown to have waveguide losses on the order of 10 dB/cm, and both are demonstrated for detection of 16mer nucleic acids.