Silicon Nanowires Integrated in a Fully Depleted CMOS Process for Charge Based Biosensing

We describe a silicon nanowire (SiNW) biosensor fabricated in a fully depleted SOI CMOS process. The sensor array consists of 32 by 32 pixel matrix (1024 pixels or test sites) and 8 input-output (I/O) pins. In each pixel single crystalline SiNW with 60 by 20 nm cross-section area is defined using sidewall transfer lithography (STL) in the SOI layer. The key advantage of the design is that 1024 individual SiNWs can be read-out sequentially and used for real-time charge based detection of molecules in liquids or gases.