Calibrate Silicon Nanowires Field Effect Transistor Sensor with its Photoresponse

Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) field effect transistor (FET) sensor has been considered to be one of the most promising candidates in the low cost detection of biological and chemical molecules. However, because of silicon nanowires' size distribution, the responses to the same sample of different SiNWs FET sensors show obvious fluctuation. Such problem brings great obstacles to used SiNWs FET sensors in high-precision detection. Here, we proposed a new strategy to calibrate SiNWs FET sensors by using its photoresponse. The foundation of this method is the similar relationship between SiNWs FET sensor response to the target and its own response to the illumination. The validity of this method were confirmed through the results of experiments that calibrated SiNWs FET sensor can accurately get the concentration results of the target in serum samples from patients with breast cancer. This work represents an important step toward the using of SiNWs FET sensor for accurate quantitative biochemical sensing and is expected to open up exciting opportunities for widely clinical application in the future.