Development of spectroscopic smartphone biosensors for point-of-care applications

This dissertation explores the combination of two emergent areas within contemporary biosensing, smartphone based spectroscopy and photonic crystal enhanced microscopy, and how these technologies can be combined to produce a fundamentally novel point-of-care testing paradigm: a portable device platform capable of non-amplifying, digital-detection for high-sensitivity diagnostics. In this work, I describe the development of this system, moving from usage-specific benchtop and smartphone based devices demonstrating proof-of-concept capabilities, to a multimodal smartphone platform compatible with thousands of existing spectroscopic assays. The resulting smartphone biosensor can perform various clinically-relevant tests with physiologically-relevant sensitivities. Next, photonic crystal enhanced microscopy is described for uses in the micrometer and nanometer scales for use both to study cellular and subcellular behavior and also to perform single-particle attachment quantification. Finally, this work explores how the single-particle attachment quantification capability can be leveraged to measure HIV viral load using a novel biosensor, designed specifically developed for a smartphone based platform for point of care applications.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste