Immunosensor: A CMOS/MEMS-Based Protein Sensor

Millions of people each year die of infectious diseases. The need for rapid and efficient diagnostics is extremely prevalent. Current diagnostic tools are found only in the laboratories of well-equipped hospitals, research labs and clinics. Simple, common tests are becoming available in the ready-to-use, "at-home" environment, such as the pregnancy test, glucose and urine analysis. These tests allow easy and rapid assays and do not require a laboratory environment. These capabilities are ideal for applications in areas where access to facilities is limited, such as in the third world and underprivileged communities, as well as doctors' offices and for at-home testing. The variety of tests that can be done in this fashion is limited. This is due to the mechanism of detection (often agglutination or precipitation) that only allows large quantities (i.e., nanolnolar concentrations) of biological substances to be detected. This limited applicability precludes a wide variety of tests from assuming this at-home format. Thus a method is needed whereby sensitive (picomolar) tests can be accurately preformed on a platfonl~ that does not require a laboratory or trained operator.