N/MEMS Biosensors: An Introduction

TL;DR

This paper reviews the fundamentals, recent advances, and potential applications of N/MEMS biosensors, emphasizing their role in developing miniaturized, reliable, and cost-effective diagnostic tools for healthcare and environmental monitoring.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of N/MEMS biosensors, including design principles, materials, performance, and future challenges, highlighting their significance in modern biosensing technology.

Findings

N/MEMS biosensors enable ultra-miniaturized, energy-efficient sensing systems.

Recent advances improve sensitivity, selectivity, and integration of N/MEMS biosensors.

Challenges include fabrication complexity and ensuring reproducibility.

Abstract

In the 21st century, biosensors have gathered much wider attention than ever before, irrespective of the technology that promises to bring them forward. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, the concern and efforts to restore global health and well-being are rising at an unprecedented rate. A requirement to develop precise, fast, point-of-care, reliable, easily disposable/reproducible and low-cost diagnostic tools have ascended. Biosensors form a primary element of hand-held medical kits, tools, products, and/or instruments. They have a very wide range of applications such as nearby environmental checks, detecting the onset of a disease, food quality, drug discovery, medicine dose control, and many more. Thischapter explains how Nano/Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (N/MEMS) can be enabling technology towards a sustainable, scalable, ultra-miniaturized, easy-to-use, energy efficient, and integrated bio/chemical sensing system. This study provides a deeper insight into the fundamentals, recent advances, and potential end applications of N/MEMS sensors and integrated systems to detect and measure the concentration of biological and/or chemical analytes. Transduction principle/s, materials, efficient designs including readout technique, and sensor performance are explained. This is followed by a discussion on how N/MEMS biosensors continue to evolve. The challenges and possible opportunities are also discussed.