Biosensors on chip: A critical review from an aspect of micro/nanoscales

Abstract Biosensors are a very well cherished research topic and have found an inseparable status from clinical diagnostics in specific and society at large. As the name suggests, biosensors or biological sensors are devices which detect the presence of biological entities or their constituents and derivatives. The field started decades ago and has matured quite well since its inception. The most important performance factors that are associated with biosensors are sensitivity, specificity, and limit of detection. The remaining efforts of the biosensor research domain focus on miniaturization aspects of the sensors. The growing advancements in this field have evolved the technology of biosensors to cater to full-scale diagnosis on microchips, bedside diagnostics, reduced cost, and increased speed of diagnostics. Biosensors are characterized through many different aspects; for example, one way is to classify them on the basis of the type of bio-recognition step that they would utilize or another way can be based on the type of detection scheme that they may integrate, etc. Depending on the bio-recognition layer’s properties, biosensors can be cell based, nucleic acid probe based, antibody/antigen based, or aptamer based, while depending on the type of detection scheme, biosensors can be viewed as colorimetric sensors, optical sensors, electrochemical sensors, mechanical sensors, etc. There are some other parallel areas of research like microfluidics and microelectromechanical systems where one of the main applications lies in the biosensor domain. This review article discusses the various aspects of biosensors, from their design, realization, to testing, along with various detection strategies. The assembly includes fabrication strategies particularly for microchip technology-based biosensing solutions, microchannels, integration to microfluidics, etc., while categorization deals with various kinds and applications of different biosensors.