A brief history of electronic virus sensors

Pandemics caused by deadly viruses — including Spanish flu, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19 — have killed millions of people throughout history. The diagnosis of such infectious diseases often requires complex laboratory techniques, expensive equipment, and trained personnel. Electronic virus sensors have the potential to provide a cost-effective test that can easily be performed at home, with minimal sample processing of easily accessible biofluids such as saliva.

A review article by Christopher Muratore and Melani Muratore highlights discoveries in electronic virus sensing to identify key areas for future development.

Electronic biomolecular sensors were invented five decades ago when researchers found that simple resistors or field effect transistors (FETs) could exhibit measurable changes in their electrical conductivity upon biomolecular adsorption.

More recent breakthroughs in nanomaterials have led to significant advances in device sensitivity. Unlike early electronic sensors that used conventional bulk materials, the advent of controlled nanowire fabrication and nanotube growth enabled receptors with extreme surface-to-volume ratios and easily detectable responses upon attachment of viruses or other pathogens. However, manufacturing challenges and the scalability of nanomaterials have prevented these nanomaterial driven devices to become logistically practical for commercial applications.

Graphene and 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) may provide a way to get around the manufacturing challenges present for nanowire- and nanotube-based devices, since those same roadblocks are less restrictive for 2D materials. In particular, the authors believe that 2D TMDs are strong candidates for commercialization efforts in electronic virus sensing. They plan on continuing their effort to explore common industrial processes, such as sputtering and laser patterning, to produce low-cost, disposable devices capable of identifying a variety of pathogens from saliva samples.

Source: “Beyond point of care diagnostics: Low-dimensional nanomaterials for electronic virus sensing,” by C. Muratore and M. K. Muratore, JVST: A (2020). The article can be accessed at http://doi.org/10.1116/6.0000368 .