A CMOS wireless biomolecular sensing system-on-chip based on polysilicon nanowire technology

• Published in: Lab on a chip 2013-11, Vol.13 (22), p.4451-4459
• Main Authors: Huang, C-W, Huang, Y-J, Yen, P-W, Tsai, H-H, Liao, H-H, Juang, Y-Z, Lu, S-S, Lin, C-T
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biosensing Techniques - instrumentation; Biosensing Techniques - methods; Biosensors; CMOS; Detection; Diagnosis; DNA, Viral - analysis; Hepatitis B virus - genetics; Humans; Metals - chemistry; Myocardium - metabolism; Nanomaterials; Nanostructure; Nanowires; Nanowires - chemistry; Oxides - chemistry; Semiconductors; Silicon - chemistry; System on chip; Temperature; Troponin I - analysis; Wireless Technology
• ISSN: 1473-0197; 1473-0189
• DOI: 10.1039/c3lc50798j

As developments of modern societies, an on-field and personalized diagnosis has become important for disease prevention and proper treatment. To address this need, in this work, a polysilicon nanowire (poly-Si NW) based biosensor system-on-chip (bio-SSoC) is designed and fabricated by a 0.35 μm 2-Poly-4-Metal (2P4M) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process provided by a commercialized semiconductor foundry. Because of the advantages of CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) technologies, the poly-Si NW biosensor is integrated with a chopper differential-difference amplifier (DDA) based analog-front-end (AFE), a successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC), and a microcontroller to have better sensing capabilities than a traditional Si NW discrete measuring system. In addition, an on-off key (OOK) wireless transceiver is also integrated to form a wireless bio-SSoC technology. This is pioneering work to harness the momentum of CMOS integrated technology into emerging bio-diagnosis technologies. This integrated technology is experimentally examined to have a label-free and low-concentration biomolecular detection for both Hepatitis B Virus DNA (10 fM) and cardiac troponin I protein (3.2 pM). Based on this work, the implemented wireless bio-SSoC has demonstrated a good biomolecular sensing characteristic and a potential for low-cost and mobile applications. As a consequence, this developed technology can be a promising candidate for on-field and personalized applications in biomedical diagnosis.