Methods gold standard in clinic millifluidics multiplexed extended gate field-effect transistor biosensor with gold nanoantennae as signal amplifiers

Abstract

We present a portable multiplexed biosensor platform based on the extended gate field-effect transistor and demonstrate its amplified response thanks to gold nanoparticle-based bioconjugates introduced as a part of the immunoassay. The platform comprises a disposable chip hosting an array of 32 extended gate electrodes, a readout module based on a single transistor operating in constant charge mode, and a multiplexer to scan sensing electrodes one-by-one. Although employing only off-the-shelf electronic components, our platform achieves sensitivities comparable to fully customized nanofabricated potentiometric sensors. In particular, it reaches a detection limit of 0.2 fM for the pure molecular assay when sensing horseradish peroxidase-linked secondary antibody (∼0.4 nM reached by standard microplate methods). Furthermore, with the gold nanoparticle bioconjugation format, we demonstrate ca. 5-fold amplification of the potentiometric response compared to a pure molecular assay, at the detection limit of 13.3 fM. Finally, we elaborate on the mechanism of this amplification and propose that nanoparticle-mediated disruption of the diffusion barrier layer is the main contributor to the potentiometric signal enhancement. These results show the great potential of our portable, sensitive, and cost-efficient biosensor for multidimensional diagnostics in the clinical and laboratory settings, including e.g., serological tests or pathogen screening.