Abstract
This review presents a deep insight into the Surface Generated Acoustic Wave (SGAW) technology for biosensing applications, based on more than 40 years of technological and scientific developments. In the last 20 years, SGAWs have been attracting the attention of the biochemical scientific community, due to the fact that some of these devices - Shear Horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave (SH-SAW), Surface Transverse Wave (STW), Love Wave (LW), Flexural Plate Wave (FPW), Shear Horizontal Acoustic Plate Mode (SH-APM) and Layered Guided Acoustic Plate Mode (LG-APM) - have demonstrated a high sensitivity in the detection of biorelevant molecules in liquid media. In addition, complementary efforts to improve the sensing films have been done during these years. All these developments have been made with the aim of achieving, in a future, a highly sensitive, low cost, small size, multi-channel, portable, reliable and commercially established SGAW biosensor. A setup with these features could significantly contribute to future developments in the health, food and environmental industries. The second purpose of this work is to describe the state-of-the-art of SGAW biosensors for the detection of pathogens, being this topic an issue of extremely importance for the human health. Finally, the review discuses the commercial availability, trends and future challenges of the SGAW biosensors for such applications.
Highlights
Pathogenic agents such as bacteria, fungi and viruses are found widely distributed in the environment, food, marine and estuarine waters, soil and the intestinal tracts of humans and animals.Many of these organisms have an essential function in Nature, but certain potentially harmful microorganisms can have profound negative effects on both animals and humans, costing the food industry many millions of dollars each year [1]
The drawbacks of oscillators are that they do not provide information about signal amplitude, they can be quenched if insertion losses exceed the amplifier gain during an experiment and if the amplifier operates in saturation, produces a distorted output signal containing many harmonics that may need to be filtered before counting the frequency [29]
From the material discussed in this review, it seems that Surface Generated Acoustic Wave (SGAW) devices are promising for the measurement of interfacial biochemical phenomena
Summary
Pathogenic agents such as bacteria, fungi and viruses are found widely distributed in the environment, food, marine and estuarine waters, soil and the intestinal tracts of humans and animals. Some acoustic wave devices based on SAW and APM, which operate efficiently in contact with liquid media (SH-SAW, LW, STW, SH-APM, LG-APM), have been reported as more sensitive than the typical QCM biosensors. The first successful approaches using SAW devices in contact with liquids were not achieved until 1987 [17,18]; these SAW devices operated with shear horizontal polarized waves Another approach for facing this problem was the use of APM devices (SH-APM and FPW), which have been reported to work efficiently in liquid media. Devices [25], because both develop acoustic waves generated and detected in the surface of the piezoelectric substrate by means of Interdigital Transducers (IDTs) These devices have many operation principles in common. This review provides a deep insight in SGAWs technology focused on biosensing applications It describes the SGAWs operation principles for biosensors: measurement techniques, associated electronics and configuration set ups. The review discuses the commercial availability, trends and future challenges of the SGAW biosensor technology for such applications
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
