Rapid uropathogenic bacterial detection by integrated photonic PCR on chip with pathogenic enrichment

It is important to diagnose pathogenic infections rapidly in urine samples for the management and treatment. However, the conventional culture-based method is too slow (1-3 days). Here, we show an integrated PCR system on chip to identify bacteria in 15 minutes. Using a plasmonic porous membrane, we captured and concentrated 50,000-fold bacteria on the membrane from 1 ml of samples in 3 minutes without any external equipment. Due to the plasmonic photothermal effect, bacteria on the plasmonic nanoporous membrane were thermally lysed within 1 minute. Furthermore, we demonstrated photonic PCR based nucleic acid detection in 8.8 minutes for 40 cycles.