Nuclear track-based biosensing: an overview

ABSTRACT

An overview on the development of biosensors based on nuclear tracks in solids is presented. A few decades ago it was found that nuclear tracks in solids can be usefully applied for the creation of biosensors. Meanwhile quite a number of different strategies have emerged to fulfill this task which are summarized here. We ourselves have especially concentrated on the ‘Product Enrichment Strategy’, where the enrichment of products of a given analyte by a suitable biochemical reaction within the narrow confinement of etched ion tracks is used to amplify the product’s signal for high-sensitivity biosensing. We also report on the application of nuclear analysis techniques for obtaining a deeper insight into these sensor structures, for the sake of their further optimization. Last not least we also discuss competing nanopore-based biosensing approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Swift heavy ions
• polymers
• irradiation
• ion tracks
• etching
• nanopores
• enzymes
• biosensors
• biotechnology

Acknowledgements

D.F. thanks the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México City, Mexico, for his invitation as guest researcher. We are further obliged to Prof. S.A. Cruz from UAM Iztapalapa, Mexico City, Mexico and Dr P. Apel from JNRI Dubna, Russia, for valuable discussions. We also thank Dr Apel for providing us with the ion-irradiated foils.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Dietmar Fink http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9569-4943

Notes

1 ‘ TEMPOS’ structures are bilayer structures consisting of Si wafer substrates and energetic heavy ion-irradiated and etched SiO₂, SiON or polymeric (e.g. photoresists, kapton, etc.) cover layers, contacted by two surface and one backside electrodes (10). They show transistor-like properties such as switching and current amplification via negative differential resistances, thus enabling AND and OR decisions, and they are useful for sensing physical, chemical and biological parameters (11).

Additional information

Funding

We thank the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic [P108-12G-108] for support. L.A. acknowledges the support of the Edmond J. Safra Center for the Design and Engineering of Functional Biopolymers at Ben-Gurion University.