A semiconductor bio-electrical platform with addressable thermal control circuits for accelerated bioassay development

A 0.18µm SOI-CMOS bioelectrical sensing technology is introduced. An SOC chip integrates biosensor pixel arrays, controllers and amplifiers is used to demonstrate the performance of this technology. The pixel size in the pixel arrays is 10µm × 10µm, including biosensor, temperature sensor and heaters. The chip demonstrates detections of hydrogen ion concentration, enzymatic reactions and DNA hybridization with PCR. Experimental results show close to Nernst limit of 59mV/pH in ion concentration detection, sub-millimolar resolutions with 99.9% linearity in urea, and 400mV surface potential change in DNA hybridization. The SOC chip has an addressable temperature control for each pixel with embedded thermal sensors. A thermal time constant of 35msec/K and sub-degree localized temperature control are achieved. Order of magnitude improvements over previously reported are seen in both detectable minimum sample liquid volume and thermal time constant for PCR. This is a good demonstration of semiconductor technology for multi-biomarkers detection for medical applications.