Biosensors Based on Mechanical and Electrical Detection Techniques

Abstract

Biosensors are powerful analytical tools for biology and biomedicine, with applications ranging from drug discovery to medical diagnostics, food safety, and agricultural and environmental monitoring. Typically, biological recognition receptors, such as enzymes, antibodies, and nucleic acids, are immobilized on a surface, and used to interact with one or more specific analytes to produce a physical or chemical change, which can be captured and converted to an optical or electrical signal by a transducer. However, many existing biosensing methods rely on chemical, electrochemical and optical methods of identification and detection of specific targets, and are often: complex, expensive, time consuming, suffer from a lack of portability, or may require centralised testing by qualified personnel. Given the general dependence of most optical and electrochemical techniques on labelling molecules, this review will instead focus on mechanical and electrical detection techniques that can provide information on a broad range of species without the requirement of labelling. These techniques are often able to provide data in real time, with good temporal sensitivity. This review will cover the advances in the development of mechanical and electrical biosensors, highlighting the challenges and opportunities therein.

Optical Biosensor Platforms Display Varying Sensitivity for the Direct Detection of Influenza RNA

“…There are several versions of ultrasensitive biosensor immobilization techniques and signal detection, including optical and piezoelectric surfaces for nucleic acid detection [14][15][16][17][18][19]. Biosensor surface chemistry allows nucleic acid probes to anchor to its surface; when viral RNA is introduced to the biosensor, the complimentary probes bind to RNA with varying sensitivity and specificity [20]. These platforms can have a low limit of detection and rapid sensing capabilities [21].…”

A Review on Biosensors and Recent Development of Nanostructured Materials-Enabled Biosensors

“…The high input impedance of these semiconductor-based transducers is used to detect chemical changes from analyte and bioreceptor reactions. FET-based biosensors possess advantages compared to the other biosensing methods because of their high sensitivity and high spatial resolution, however they suffer some limitations when employed in vitro applications [ 115 , 116 ]. Frequently used transistor-based sensing platforms in biological applications are ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) and metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), depending on the technique of applying the gate voltage, design, and material of the gate and the channel region.…”

Applications of laboratory findings in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of COVID-19

“…167,168 The emerging biosensing-based platforms are promising appliances that are highly specific and sensitive. [169][170][171][172] The biosensors generally combine receptors and transducers, 173,174 such that a signal change that is generated after the specific interaction between immobilized receptors and targets can be transduced into measurable or visible output. 175,176 Remarkably, the nanotechnology-based biosensors can achieve higher sensitivity, since the nanomaterials used in the transducers have the advantage of distinctly amplifying the detection signals.…”