Nanowire-organic thin film transistor integration and scale up towards developing sensor array for biomedical sensing applications

Exploratory research works have demonstrated the capability of conducting nanowire arrays in enhancing the sensitivity and selectivity of bio-electrodes in sensing applications. With the help of different surface manipulation techniques, a wide range of biomolecules have been successfully immobilized on these nanowires. Flexible organic electronics, thin film transistor (TFT) fabricated on flexible substrate, was a breakthrough that enabled development of logic circuits on flexible substrate. In many health monitoring scenarios, a series of biomarkers, physical properties and vital signals need to be observed. Since the nano-bio-electrodes are capable of measuring all or most of them, it has been aptly suggested that a series of electrode (array) on single substrate shall be an excellent point of care tool. This requires an efficient control system for signal acquisition and telemetry. An array of flexible TFTs has been designed that acts as active matrix for controlled switching of or scanning by the sensor array. This array is a scale up of the flexible organic TFT that has been fabricated and rigorously tested in previous studies. The integration of nanowire electrodes to the organic electronics was approached by growing nanowires on the same substrate as TFTs and fl ip chip packaging, where the nanowires and TFTs are made on separate substrates. As a proof of concept, its application has been explored in various multi-focal biomedical sensing applications, such as neural probes for monitoring neurite growth, dopamine, and neuron activity; myocardial ischemia for spatial monitoring of myocardium.