Surface plasmon resonance sensor with dispersionless microfluidics for direct detection of nucleic acids at the low femtomole level

We report on a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor which incorporates novel microfluidics that delivers a sample to the sensing area without dispersion of the sample and thus enables faster and more sensitive detection. It is demonstrated that the sensor is able to detect short sequence of nucleic acids (20 bases) characteristic for Escherichia coli down to femtomole level in 4 min.