Liquid photonic-molecule microlasers for ultrasensitive biosensing
Yan Wang, Yu-Hao Hu, Jin-Lei Wu, Rui Duan, Ya‐Feng Jiao, Hai-Yan Wang, Li-Ying Jiang, Le-Man Kuang, Handong Sun, Hui Jing
Abstract
Droplet microlasers, as promising tools for biophotonics and biomedical sciences, have witnessed rapid advances due to their flexible reconfigurability, high sensitivity to stimuli, and label-free biosensing ability. However, designing these biosensors with simultaneously critical properties of low lasing threshold, high spectral purity, and ultimate sensitivity remains challenging. Here, we propose a versatile strategy to build liquid photonic molecules (LPMs) that combine all these features in a single device. We find that through tailoring the spectral Vernier overlap in size-mismatched droplets, this device enables single-mode lasing with a low threshold of ~610 nJ mm−2. The LPM lasers are engineered for dynamic tunability using a molecular isomerization strategy, which induces spectral mode hopping and thus yields a nearly ten-fold enhancement in spectral sensitivity over single droplets. Moreover, by leveraging the self-referenced intensity response of the LPM lasing modes, we demonstrate a three-orders-of-magnitude enhancement in biomolecular sensing, with a detection limit of 30 aM and a dynamic range spanning nine orders of magnitude. Our work offers exciting prospects for bio-integrated liquid sensors in diverse applications. Droplet microlasers are emerging as powerful tools for label-free biosensing. Here, the authors demonstrate a new method for creating liquid photonic-molecule microlasers that combine low lasing threshold and enhanced sensitivity, achieving biomolecular detection limit down to attoMolar level.