Selective acoustic plate mode DNA sensor

Abstract

Acoustic wave sensors have been proposed for (bio)sensing applications for the past 20 years. One of the most attractive acoustic wave sensor geometries for these applications is the acoustic plate mode (APM) delay line. However, the use of APM delay lines has been hampered by the relative immaturity of the associated design techniques. The principle issue in the design of APM delay lines is to excite and detect electrically a single acoustic mode within the plate with distortion from intermode interference or multiple waveguide reflections. The use of single-phase unidirectional transducers (SPUDT) enables the excitation and detection of a single acoustic mode, reducing the distortions that occur in conventional transducer designs. The current work examines the sensing properties of the resulting APM device for the selective detection of chemically denatured, double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (ds-DNA) obtained through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of genomic viral DNA from cytomegalovirus (CMV).