Highly Sensitive FPW-Based Microsystem for Rapid Detection of Tetrahydrocannabinol in Human Urine.

This paper presents a highly sensitive flexural plate-wave (FPW)-based microsystem for rapid detection of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in human urine. First, a circular-type interdigital transducer (IDT) was integrated with a circular-type silicon-grooved reflective grating structure (RGS) to reduce insertion loss. Then, with lower insertion loss (-38.758 dB), the FPW device was used to develop a novel THC biosensor, and the results reveal that this FPW-THC biosensor has low detection limit (1.5625 ng/mL) and high mass-sensitivity (126.67 cm²/g). Finally, this biosensor was integrated with field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board and discrete components for prototyping a FPW readout system, whose maximum error was 12.378 kHz to ensure that the linearity of detection up to R-square is equal to 0.9992.

Development of an FPW Biosensor with Low Insertion Loss and High Fabrication Yield for Detection of Carcinoembryonic Antigen.

In the last two decades, various flexural plate-wave (FPW)-based biosensors with low phase velocity, low operation frequency, high sensitivity, and short response time, have been developed. However, conventional FPW transducers have low fabrication yield because controlling the thickness of silicon/isolation/metal/piezoelectric multilayer floating thin-plate is difficult. Additionally, conventional FPW devices usually have high insertion loss because of wave energy dissipation to the silicon substrate or outside area of the output interdigital transducers (IDTs). These two disadvantages hinder the application of FPW devices. To reduce the high insertion loss of FPW devices, we designed two focus-type IDTs (fan-shaped and circular, respectively) that can effectively confine the launched wave energy, and adopted a focus-type silicon-grooved reflective grating structure (RGS) that can reduce the wave propagation loss. To accurately control the thickness of the silicon thin-plate and substantially improve the fabrication yield of FPW transducers, a 60 °C/27 °C two-step anisotropic wet etching process was developed. Compared with conventional FPW devices (with parallel-type IDTs and without RGS), the proposed FPW devices have lower insertion loss (36.04 dB) and higher fabrication yield (63.88%). Furthermore, by using cystamine-based self-assembled monolayer (SAM) nanotechnology, we used the improved FPW device to develop a novel FPW-based carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) biosensor for detection of colorectal cancer, and this FPW-CEA biosensor has a low detection limit (5 ng/mL), short response time (<10 min), high sensitivity (60.16-70.06 cm²/g), and high sensing linearity (R-square = 0.859-0.980).