(Digital Presentation) Biosensors – Researching at the Crossroads of Engineering and the Sciences
Authors: Deen M. Jamal 
Published: July 2022

It has been a pleasure and honor to know Dr. Landheer for more than three decades and to have collaborated with him. In this invited presentation, I will focus on one aspect of our collaboration – the topic of Biosensors – which was our last research collaboration. In the list of references [1-15], I provide all publications we collaborated on since 1986.

Biosensors are increasingly used in environmental applications, especially for water quality monitoring. This is because the availability of safe drinking water is fundamental to our good health. However, as water resources get increasingly stressed, ensuring a safe water supply and effective water treatment becomes increasingly important. In addition, waterborne illnesses are a significant public health problem. At the same time, current monitoring of microbiological contamination of water currently is time-consuming, laboratory based, and frequently compromises the timeliness of health advisory warnings even when contamination is found. Therefore, rapid detection of unsafe water can contribute greatly to mitigating the morbidity and mortality associated with waterborne diseases due to microbiological contaminants. Fortunately, the research community has shown increasing interest in the development of microtechnology-based sensors for the detection and identification of the bio-contaminants. These sensing systems use the same fabrication technology that has enabled the drastic lowering of cost, exponential increase in complexity of electronic chips and widespread availability of computing resources. In this presentation, we will discuss a low-cost, electrical, label-free microfabricated biosensor that we have been developing for pathogen detection related to water quality and also for ubiquitous-healthcare applications. The use of nano-dimensions devices to create futuristic nano-biosensors for both environmental and health applications will be introduced. And we will also describe our ongoing work to create highly integrated and parallel detection systems by integrating the sensor, the processing electronics and the pre-processing stages on the same cheap substrate. Finally, the success of such a low-cost, highly integrated sensing system demands a convergence of expertise from various engineering disciplines, the physical and life sciences as well as public health.

References

D Landheer et al, “Bioaffinity Sensors Based on MOS Field—Effect Transistors,” in Semiconductor Device-Based Sensors for Gas, Chemical, and Biomedical Applications, Eds. Ren, Pearton, Taylor & Francis Books, Boca Raton, 215-265, 2010.

MW Shinwari, et al, Microfabricated Reference Electrodes and their Biosensing Applications, Sensors, Vol. 10(3), pp. 1679-1715, 2010.

MW Shinwari, MJ Deen, D Landheer, “Study of the Electrolyte-Insulator-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor with Applications in Biosensor Design,” Microelectronics Reliability, Vol. 47(12), pp. 2025-2057, 2007.

D Landheer, et al, Calculation of the Response of Field-Effect Transistors to Charged Biological Molecules, IEEE Sensors Journal, Vol. 7, 1233-1242, 2007.

WH Jiang, et al, Post-processing of Commercial CMOS Chips for the Fabrication of DNA Bio-FET Sensor Arrays, Proceedings of MRS Symposium - Fall Meeting, 6 pages, 2006.

Bioelectronics, Biointerfaces, and Biomedical Applications 2, Eds., D Landheer, R. Bashir, M. Deen, C. Kranz, C. Liu, M. Madou, A. Offenhaeusser, R. Schasfoort, ECS Transactions, Vol. 3, Issue 26, 2006.

MJ Deen, et al, Noise Considerations in Field-Effect Biosensors, Journal Applied Physics, Vol. 100, #074703, 8 pages, 2006.

MJ Deen, et al, High Sensitivity Detection of Biological Species via the Field-Effect, Proceedings of the IEEE ICCDCS, Playa del Carmen, Mexico, pp. 381-385, 2006.

D Landheer, et al, Model for the Field-Effect from Layers of Biological Macromolecules on the Gates of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Transistors, Journal Applied Physics, Vol. 98, # 044701, 2005.

Silicon Nitride and Silicon Dioxide Thin Insulating Films, Eds., R.E. Sah, MJ Deen, D Landheer, K.B. Sundaram, W.D. Brown, D. Misra, ECS Proceedings PV-03, 636 pages 2003.

Silicon Nitride and Silicon Dioxide Thin Insulating Films, Eds., K.B. Sundaram, MJ Deen, D Landheer, W.D. Brown, D. Misra, M.D. Allendorf, R.E. Sah, ECS Proceedings Volume PV 2001-7, 2001.

MJ Deen, et al, Low Frequency Noise in Cadmium Selenide Thin-Film Transistors, Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 77(14), pp. 2234-2236, 2000.

MJ Deen, et al, Low Frequency Noise in CdSe Thin-Film Transistors, ESSDERC 2000, Cork, Ireland, pp. 592-595, 2000.

MJ Deen, et al, NbN Thin Films Reactively Sputtered with a High Field DC Magnetron, Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, Vol. 6(4), pp. 2299-2303, 1988.

MJ Deen, et al, The Effect of the Deposition Rate on the Properties of DC Magnetron Sputtered NbN Thin Films, Bull Am Phys Soc., Vol. 32(3), p. 646, 1987.