Aluminium nitride - graphene dual-mode sensors for cancer cell detection

我们建议开发一种基于石墨烯和氮化铝（AlN）组成的薄膜异质结构的晶圆级器件制造技术，该技术最近由我们的团队首次展示。aln -石墨烯异质结构作为一种新型的正交生物传感器，能够在一个集成器件内同时检测固定的细胞和分子物种的质量和电荷。这种新的能力有望大大减少基于抗原抗体结合介导的细胞捕获的癌细胞检测中的假阳性和假阴性。作为一种生物活性传感器表面，生物功能化石墨烯可以通过石墨烯中的电场效应实现电荷检测。同时，石墨烯生物界面层将被用作电极-与嵌入异质结构中的其他石墨烯层结合-以实现完全集成的压电激励和独立AlN结构的机械变形或振荡的读数。细胞捕获引起的变形或机械共振的改变应该允许对固定物种进行大规模检测。这种完全集成设备的正交传感能力将被测试和基准，用于检测血液或其他体液中的癌细胞。

We propose to develop a technology for wafer scale device fabrication based on thin film heterostructures composed of graphene and aluminium nitride (AlN), which were recently demonstrated by our team for the first time. As a new orthogonal approach for biosensors, AlN-graphene heterostructures should enable simultaneous mass and charge detection of immobilized cellular and molecular species within one integrated device. This new capability is expected to lead to a dramatic reduction of false positives and false negatives in cancer cell detection based on antigen-antibody bond-mediated cell capturing. : As a bioactive sensor surface, bio-functionalized graphene enables charge detection via the electric field effect in graphene. Simultaneously, the graphene biointerface layer will be employed as an electrode - in combination with other graphene layer(s) embedded inside the heterostructure - to enable a fully integrated piezoelectric excitation and readout of mechanical deformations or oscillations of a free-standing AlN structure. Cell capture-induced alterations of the deformation or mechanical resonance should allow mass detection of the immobilized species. This orthogonal sensing capability of fully integrated devices will be tested and benchmarked for detection of cancer cells in blood or other body fluids.