Carbon based materials for electronic bio-sensing

Abstract

Bio-sensing represents one of the most attractive applications of carbon material based electronic devices; nevertheless, the complete integration of bioactive transducing elements still represents a major challenge, particularly in terms of preserving biological function and specificity while maintaining the sensor's electronic performance. This review highlights recent advances in the realization of field-effect transistor (FET) based sensors that comprise a bio-receptor within the FET channel. A birds-eye view will be provided of the most promising classes of active layers as well as different device architectures and methods of fabrication. Finally, strategies for interfacing bio-components with organic or carbon nano-structured electronic active layers are reported. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.