Visual “Dam-Break Drainage” Nucleic Acid Chips: Family-Affordable Platform for Rapid and Ultrasensitive Pathogens Detection

The critical need for highly sensitive, rapid, low-cost and equipment-free pathogens diagnostics is acutely felt in resource-limited settings, such as in low-income region and at home, where existing methods force a compromise among these key metrics. We break this trade-off with a nucleic acid chip that leverages a novel “dam-break drainage” readout model and a CRISPR-Cas13a-mediated interfacial wettability switching sensing mechanism. This design unlocks both single-plex and duplex visual detection, delivering attomolar sensitivity (10 and 100 aM), rapid results (2 and 5 min) and low cost (0.20$ and 0.30$ per test), respectively. In a 40 clinical-samples validation for SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A virus and Influenza B virus, our platform demonstrated robust clinical concordance and successfully detected samples with ambiguous RT-PCR results (Ct = 35). This work provides a powerful and accessible solution for next-generation point-of-care molecular testing.