(336a) (Invited Plenary Talk) Silicon Nanowire Photoelectric Protein Sensors

Protein sensing is where the rubber hits the road in biology. Hence measuring protein concentrations is important for many applications including point of care testing, bio and pharma manufacturing, food production, bioweapons detection, and fertility assistance. The field of biosensing has made great progress and is about to enter a more mature stage that will greatly improve our lives.

In this talk, we review some of the types of biosensing being developed. Then we focus on our photo-electric ELISA. Our photo-electric ELISA uses arrays of millions of vertically aligned silicon nanowires to detect dilute qualities of protein in a solution. Protein measurements can be completed in less than 15 minutes and the sensors can be made a very low cost. The high surface area to volume ratio allows for a sensor that can detect dilute quantities of protein in a solution. Since we use silicon wafers and perform an electrical measurement, we can make use of the semiconductor’s knowledge of packing many tests onto the same chip and thus can form a multiplexed test that measures the concentration of many different proteins on the same chip. Since we do an electrical measurement, our measurement system is low cost and can operate for a wide range of vales.

We will explore the fabrication of the nanowire sensors and the mechanism of operation of the sensors. In addition, we will present results showing the response of the sensor when exposed to the protein of interest. We will then discuss how we are optimizing the sensor and improving the reproducibility of the test.