Session Speaker

Novel Acoustic Sensors for Clinical Applications
Alexandros K. Pantazis Electra Gizeli, George Konstantinidis
Greece

Sensitivity plays a key role in analytical biosystems for detecting minute quantities of biomolecules of clinical and pharmacological significance. Acoustic devices have proven until now their value in a variety of applications, most of them related to interaction studies and analysis either between different biomolecules or between biomolecules and surfaces. Despite of the fact that these devices have been used widely, they have limitations that prevent them to be employed successfully to specific applications.

In order to overcome some of these limitations, a different approach has been developed. An acoustic biosensor was designed AB initio based on a membrane-supported structure and a non-previously used material. This device, which supports a Lamb-wave on a GaN layer, has enhanced sensitivity (2-3 times greater than that of conventional acoustic devices). Additionally, it is compatible with semiconductor processing techniques, which makes it ideal for large-scale biosystems (reconfigurable arrays) and their monolithic integration with microelectronic and RF-MEMS components. This implies that standard microfabrication processing can be applied for production of inexpensive systems with the necessary sensitivity for drug detection and diagnostic purposes.

The device has being tested and validated during the detection of biomolecules of different molecular weight and the results will be discussed.