The biosensing of liver cancer cells based on the terahertz plasmonic metamaterials

Real-time detection for living cells in vitro is essential for cell physiology, leading to a strong requirement of low cost and label free biosensors. At present, the terahertz plasmonic metamaterials (TPMMs) are an especially attractive application for biosensing owing to their sharp resonances respond. Compared with traditional biosensors, such as flow cytomertry, the TPMMs biosensors have many unique advantages, containing real-time monitoring, free label and high sensitivity. In this paper, we proposed a TPMMs which is designed by digging out periodically arranged regular hexagonal holes on the metal plate with the thickness of 200 nm. The samples of the TPMMs is used as a platform for detecting liver cancer cell GEP2 concentration at five levels (1 × 10⁴, 5 × 10⁴, 1 × 10⁵, 3 × 10⁵ and 5 × 10⁵cells/ml). The results show that The THz PMMs biosensor cannot distinguish cell concentrations within the orders of magnitude between 1 × 10⁴ and 5 × 10⁴ cells/ml, however, it can distinguish cell concentrations within the orders of magnitude between 1 × 10⁴ and 1 × 10⁵ cells/ml based on the x-polarized reflection spectrum TPMMs biosensor. On the other hand, the transmission spectrum TPMMs biosensor has a significant detectability of the orders of magnitude cell concentration between 10⁴ and 10⁵ cells/ml. The proposed TPMMs biosensor paves a fascinating platform for have been widely applied for cell detection, biotechnology.