Development of an innovative reusable terahertz biosensor platform integrated graphene and all-silicon groove for detecting cancer cells in aqueous environments

The label-free detection and analysis of cancer cells using portable biosensing devices is crucial and promising. In this study, a novel reusable biosensing platform with a microfluidic-like based on terahertz plasmonic metasurfaces utilizing graphene integrated with an all-silicon groove for detecting liquid live cancer cells was developed. The proposed biosensor platform stands out because it can differentiate between the concentrations of three types of cancer cells by monitoring changes in resonance intensity and phase difference. The minimum concentration for identification was reduced to as low as 5 × 10⁴ cells/mL. We effectively constructed two-dimensional optical intensity cards using continuous wavelet transforms, which presented a more accurate approach for the recognition and determination of the three types of cancer cells. Our proposed biosensors show great potential for the determination and recognition of label-free cancer cells in aqueous environments as alternatives to non-immune biosensing technology.