Patent ID: 7517656

Claim:
An optical sensor for monitoring molecular binding interactions, said sensor comprising: A) at least one porous silicon region comprising more than 1000 pores, each pore having a nominal width and a nominal depth at least 10 times larger than said nominal width, with the depth of each pore being approximately equal to the depth of at least most other pores in said porous silicon region, said porous silicon region defining a top surface and a bottom surface, and said bottom surface being parallel or approximately parallel to said top surface; B) at least one buffer-sample fluid flow channel located above said at least one porous silicon region providing a fluid flow passage across said porous silicon region; C) at least one light source for illuminating said at least one porous silicon region; D) at least one interference monitor adapted to monitor interference patterns caused by interference of light reflected from said top surface with light reflected from said bottom surface of said at least one porous silicon region, said interference monitor comprising a deep well linear photodiode array of pixels, each pixel having a photoelectron full well capacity of about 156 million photoelectrons or more, and having a frame rate of about one hundred or more frames of interference fringe data per second; E) a fluid flow control system for producing controlled flow of buffer solutions, ligand containing solutions, and analyte containing solutions through said at least one fluid flow channel; and F) a computer processor programmed with a computer program causing said processor to execute molecular binding measurements based on changes in the interference patterns monitored by the at least one interference monitor while analytes bind with and disassociate from ligands attached to surfaces of said pores, said computer program comprising executable instructions for calculating optical path differences in measured interference fringe patterns that are correlated to a test fringe pattern, wherein the test fringe pattern varies sinusoidally as a function of optical path differences divided by the wavelength of said light.