Top-down fabricated polysilicon nanoribbon biosensor chips for cancer diagnosis

Nanobiosensors have drawn significant research interest in recent years owing to the advantages of label-free, electrical detection. However, nanobiosensors fabricated by bottom-up process are limited in terms of yield and device uniformity due to the challenges in assembly. Nanobiosensors fabricated by top-down process, on the other hand, exhibit better uniformity but require time and costly processes and materials to achieve the critical dimensions required for high sensitivity. In this report, we introduce a top-down nanobiosensor based on polysilicon nanoribbon. The polysilicon nanoribbon devices can be fabricated by conventional photolithography with only materials and equipments used in the standard CMOS process, thus resulting in great time and cost efficiency, as well as scalability. The devices show great response to pH changes with a wide dynamic range and high sensitivity. Biomarker detection is also demonstrated with clinically relevant sensitivity. Such results suggest that polysilicon nanoribbon devices exhibit great potential toward a highly efficient, reliable and sensitive biosensing platform.