Electrical Responses of Dengue Virus (DENV) using Poly-Si Nanowire Array Biosensor

Dengue fever (DF) is one of the deadliest diseases threatening human life. It is transmitted to human body from the bite of female Aedes mosquitoes affected by dengue viruses (DENV). To date, there is no specific antibiotic, vaccine or medication to fight against DENV, hence those infected with DF are often dependent on the non-specific treatments currently available to treat DF symptoms. In these regards, the need for appropriate excellent devices for early detection of DENV could potentially be beneficial, thus a necessary countermeasure can be taken to save human life. We report herein the electrical responses of DENV using poly-Si nanowire array biosensor device. The poly-Si nanowire array was successfully fabricated using the top-down nanofabrication method starting with the sample preparation of the poly-Si-based wafer. The poly-Si nanowire array was developed by using the conventional lithography process, which includes resist coating, soft bake, exposure, development, hard hake, inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE), and followed by the deposition of the metal contact pads. The surface functionalization of poly-Si nanowire array involves three step procedures, which are surface modification, immobilization, and hybridization in order to detect a specific target of DENV. The morphology and topography of poly-Si nanowires array were observed for the optical characterizations. The electrical characterization based on the current-voltage (I-V) measurement of poly-Si nanowire biosensors was carrier out to analyze the performance of the biosensor in term of limit of detection (LOD). In this research, the poly-Si nanowire array biosensors exhibited excellent performance with LOD of 10 fM, enables for direct deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules detection. Thus, this poly-Si nanowire array can be utilized as an enhanced transducer and acts as biosensor for future biomedical applications.