AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Electronic Materials and Processing Thursday Sessions
       Session EM+SS+AS+NS-ThM

Paper EM+SS+AS+NS-ThM4
Functional Conductive Polymer to Inexpensive and Portable Chemiresistive Biosensor

Thursday, November 1, 2012, 9:00 am, Room 14

Session: Nanoelectronic Interfaces, Materials, and Devices
Presenter: D. Bhattacharyya, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Authors: D. Bhattacharyya, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
K.K. Gleason, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Correspondent: Click to Email
Extensive research has focused on developing different types of biosensors for detecting bio-threat risks and the occurrence of toxins in the food supplies. However, these food screening processes involve many steps, have high labor costs, reagent costs and time delays of atleast 2-3 days to obtain reliable data. Despite the current availability of various types of sensors, limitations of the current state-of-the-art biosensors for molecular recognition of biomolecules are well known. Among these limitations are the unacceptably long process times required for detection and user non-compliance as a result of the excessive weight of the sensor modules coupled with the inflexibility of the sensor platforms for routine uses. Chemiresistive biosensors detect changes in resistance when analyte molecules specifically bind to the sensor surface. Chemiresistive biosensing technique is attractive because it is label-free and can be developed for faster detection of analytes. In this work, oxidative chemical vapor deposition (oCVD) technique is employed for deposition of functional conductive copolymer thin films on the electro-spun fiber mats. The dry oCVD process allowed us to deposit uniform and conformal conducting –OH functional copolymeric film on the electro-spun fiber mat in a single step. For the proof-of-concept of the biosensor application, avidin molecules were covalently immobilized to the –OH functional groups. Various concentrations of biotin solutions were employed as the analytes. The responses and the response times of the devices were significantly improved when the high surface area electro-spun mat were used as a substrate in contrast to a flat substrate.