Biosensing with Back-gated Graphene Field Effect Transistors
Creators: name: O'Driscoll, Benjamin
Publisher: name: University of Plymouth
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Biosensing
subject: Graphene
subject: GFET
subject: Graphene Field Effect Transistors
subject: Lead detection
subject: Aptamer Functionalisation
subject: Thrombin Binding Aptamer
subject: PhD

description: Publications: SCRAMBLE: Sweep Comparison Research Application for Multiple Back-gated fieLd Effect measurements of graphene field effect transistors, Benjamin O’Driscoll, SoftwareX, 2021. 15: DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2021.100757 Emerging graphene-based sensors for the detection of food adulterants and toxicants – A review, Vikram Srinivasa Raghavan, Benjamin O'Driscoll, J.M. Bloor, Bing Li, Prateek Katare, Jagriti Sethi, Sai Siva Gorthi, David Jenkins, Food Chemistry, Volume 355, 2021, 129547 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.129547. Graphene FET Sensors for Alzheimer’s Disease Protein Biomarker Clusterin Detection, Theodore Bungon, Carrie Haslam, Samar Damiati, Benjamin O’Driscoll, Toby Whitley, Paul Davey and Shakil Awan (2021) Front. Mol. Biosci. 8:651232. DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.651232 Conference Proceedings Aptamer functionalisation of back-gated field effect transistors for Pb2+ sensing, Benjamin O’Driscoll, Vikram Srinivasa Raghavan, Theodore Bungon, Paul Davey, Toby Whitley, Shakil A. Awan and Sai Siva Gorthi. Proceedings of the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Biosensors, 14–18 February 2022, MDPI: Basel, Switzerland, DOI: 10.3390/IECB2022-12344 Graphene FET Sensors for Alzheimer’s Disease Protein Biomarker Clusterin Detection, Theodore Bungon, Carrie Haslam, Samar Damiati, Benjamin O’Driscoll, Toby Whitley, Paul Davey and Shakil Awan, Proceedings 2020, 60, 14. DOI: 10.3390/IECB2020-07229
description: The widespread existence of the heavy metal lead in the environment is a severe threat to the health of humans. Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates over time in the body restricting the cognitive, behavioural and psychological development of children. Since water is one exposure route for chemical hazards like Pb2+ it is envisioned that monitoring drinking water sources with low-cost, sensitive and field-suitable devices is one way that human exposure can be limited. Herein presents graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) functionalised with aptamers as bioreceptors, for the specific detection of Pb2+ ions in water. Functionalising GFETs with bioreceptors facilitates the specific detection of target analytes. Traditionally antibodies have been used to do this but owing to their poor stability, high expense and batch to batch variability the recent trend in biosensing technologies has focussed on the functionalisation of short-base single stranded DNA chains called aptamers. Herein, their immobilisation on sensor surfaces is demonstrated in two ways; indirectly, using the intermediary bi-directional molecule 1-pyrenebutyric acid N-hydroxysuccinimide ester (PBASE) and directly, exploiting aptamers modified with pyrene groups able to stack directly on the graphene surface. This work provides an evaluation of these two immobilisation strategies for the detection of Pb2+. Alongside the development of these sensors, this contribution presents robust characterisation and testing strategies for the GFET devices in order to improve the confidence in the conclusions made about metrics describing their essential features. Open-source, customisable and innovative data analysis packages are also introduced in this work which facilitate the rapid, facile and detailed manipulation of large data sets arising from characterisation techniques. These tools dramatically decrease the time between data acquisition and analysis allowing new insights into how the GFETs are working to be uncovered.