Journal of Analytical & Bioanalytical Techniques
Open Access

Research Article

Optical and Electrical Si-Based Biosensors: Fabrication and Trasduction Issues

Libertino S^1*, Conoci S², Santangelo MF¹, Pagano R¹, Sciuto EL³, Sinatra F³, Sanfilippo D², Fallica G² and Lombardo S¹

¹CNR - IMM, VIII strada Z.I., 5, Catania, Italy

²STMicroelectronics, Stradale Primosole 50, Catania, Italy

³University of Catania – G.F. Ingrassia Department, Via Santa Sofia 87, Catania, Italy

*Corresponding Author:

Sebania Libertino
CNR – IMM, VIII strada Z.I., 5
95121 Catania, Italy
Tel: +39-095-5968-224
Fax: +39-095-5968-312
E-mail: sebania.libertino@imm.cnr.it

Received date: January 20, 2014; Accepted date: February 22, 2014; Published date: February 25, 2014

Citation: Libertino S, Conoci S, Santangelo MF, Pagano R, Sciuto EL, et al. (2014) Optical and Electrical Si-Based Biosensors: Fabrication and Trasduction Issues. J Anal Bioanal Tech S12:007. doi: 10.4172/2155-9872.S12-007

Copyright: © 2014 Libertino S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

In this work we discussed feasibility studies and examples of biological molecules integration in Si-based miniaturized devices. We investigated three main issues: (i) device surface functionalization, (ii) biological molecule functionality after immobilization and (iii) biosensor working principle using both electrical and optical transduction mechanisms. In the first case the idea is to fabricate electrolyte-insulator-semiconductor (EIS) and, in the near future, ion-sensitive field effect transistor (ISFET) biosensors. The electrical characterization of MOS-like capacitors with ssDNA anchored on the SiO2 dielectric, allowed us to conclude that the structures tested are sensitive to DNA immobilization and hybridization, as demonstrated by a positive shift in the flat band voltage after ssDNA immobilization and by a further shift after prefect match hybridization. The optical transduction mechanism, using an approach closer to commercial devices (e.g. DNA-chip) is based on the use of pixelated solid state photon-detectors (Silicon Photomultipliers, SiPM). We showed this new device can be used to replace traditional optical detector in DNA-chip applications and allows designing new optical detection systems based on photon counting operation.

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