Biofunctionalized silicon nitride platform for sensing applications

Silicon nitride (SiNx) based biosensors have the potential to converge on the technological achievements of semiconductor microfabrication and biotechnology. Development of biofunctionalized SiNx surface and its integration with other devices will allow us to integrate the biosensing capability with probe control, data acquisition and data processing. Here we use the hydrogen plasma generated by inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) technique to produce amino-functionality on the surface of SiNx which can then be readily used for biomolecule immobilization. ICP-RIE produces high-density hydrogen ions/radicals at low energy, which produces high-density amino group on the SiNx surface within a short duration of time and with minimal surface damage. In this work, we have demonstrated selective amination of SiNx surface as compared to Si surface. The as-activated SiNx surface can be readily biofunctionalized with both protein and oligonucleotide through covalent immobilization. N-5-azido-2-nitrobenzoyloxysuccinimide, a photoactivable amino reactive bifunctional crosslinker, was used and greater than 90% surface coverage was achieved for protein immobilization. In addition, ssDNA immobilization and hybridization with its complemented strand was shown. Thus, we demonstrate a uniform, reliable, fast and economical technique for creating biofunctionalized SiNx surface that can be used for developing compact high-sensitivity biosensors.