Semiconductor-Based Sensors

This book provides a comprehensive summary of the status of emerging sensor technologies and provides a framework for future advances in the field. Chemical sensors have gained in importance in the past decade for applications that include homeland security, medical and environmental monitoring and also food safety. A desirable goal is the ability to simultaneously analyze a wide variety of environmental and biological gases and liquids in the field and to be able to selectively detect a target analyte with high specificity and sensitivity. The goal is to realize real-time, portable and inexpensive chemical and biological sensors and to use these as monitors for handheld gas, environmental pollutant, exhaled breath, saliva, urine, or blood, with wireless capability.

In the medical area, frequent screening can catch the early development of diseases, reduce the suffering of patients due to late diagnoses, and lower the medical cost. For example, a 96% survival rate has been predicted in breast cancer patients if the frequency of screening is every three months. This frequency cannot be achieved with current methods of mammography due to high cost to the patient and invasiveness (radiation). In the area of detection of medical biomarkers, many different methods, including enzyme-linked immunsorbent assay (ELISA), particle-based flow cytometric assays, electrochemical measurements based on impedance and capacitance, electrical measurement of microcantilever resonant frequency change, and conductance measurement of semiconductor nanostructures, gas chromatography (GC), ion chromatography, high density peptide arrays, laser scanning quantitiative analysis, chemiluminescence, selected ion flow tube (SIFT), nanomechanical cantilevers, bead-based suspension microarrays, magnetic biosensors and mass spectrometry (MS) have been employed. Depending on the sample condition, these methods may show variable results in terms of sensitivity for some applications and may not meet the requirements for a handheld biosensor.

Sample Chapter(s)
Chapter 1: 60-GHz CMOS Micro-radar System-in-package for Noncontact and Noninvasive Measurement of Human Vital Signs and Vibrations (3,814 KB)

• 60-GHz CMOS Micro-Radar System-in-Package for Noncontact Vibrations and Noninvasive Measurement of Human Vital Signs and Vibrations (Teyu Kao, Jenshan Lin )
• Biomimetric Fractal Nanometals as a Transducer Layer in Electrochemical Biosensing (E S McLamore, M Convertino, I Ocsoy, D C Vanegas, M Taguchi, Y Rong, C Gomes, P Chaturvedi, J C Claussen)
• Carbon Nanodots for Sensor Applications (Sichen Zhang, Xiangcheng Sun, Yupeng Wu, Yu Lei)
• Rapid Detection of Biotoxin and Pathogen, and Quick Identification of Ligand-Receptor Binding Affinity Using AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (Yu-Lin Wang, Fan Ren, Stephen Pearton, Chih-Cheng Huang, You-Ren Hsu)
• Stability and Reliability of III-Nitride Based Biosensors (Nathaniel Rohrbaugh, Ronny Kirste, Ramon Collazo, Albena Ivanisevic)
• GaN-Based Hydrogen Sensors (Kwang Hyeon Baik, Soohwan Jang)
• Graphene-Based Chemical Sensors (Geonyeop Lee, Younghun Jung, Jihyun Kim)
• Electronic Micro-Sensors for Metabolite Detection Based on Conductivity Change of Polyaniline (Yu-Lin Wang, Kuan-Chung Fang, Chia-Ho Chu, Jung-Ying Fang, Indu Sarangadharan)
• ZnO Nanorod Based Sensors (Chen-Fong Lo, Byung S Kang, Stephen J Pearton, Ivan I Kravchenko, Fan Ren)
• Scalable Nanomanufacturing of Broadband Antireflection Coatings on Semiconductors (Pratik Kothary, Sin-Yen Leo, Danielle Liu, Peng Jiang)
• Breath Biomarker Detection by Chemical Sensors (J Huang, Y Li, S Sood, P I Gouma)
• Gallium Nitride Microelectronics for High-Temperature Environments (Debbie G Senesky, Hongyun So, Ateeq J Suria, Ananth Saran Yalamarthy, Sambhav R Jain, Caitlin A Chapin, Heather C Chiamori, Minmin Hou)
• Emerging Nanotechnology for Strain Gauge Sensor (Sheng-Po Fang, Todd Schumann, Lisdelys Garcia, Yong-Kyu Yoon)