Multi­scale Mod­el­ing for Re­con­fig­urable Bio­sen­sors

We’re de­light­ed to share that GTS sci­en­tist Dr. José María González Medina has co-au­thored a pi­o­neer­ing pa­per ti­tled “A Com­pu­ta­tion­al Mod­el­ing for Re­con­fig­urable Bio­sen­sors” with our project partners from EPFL’s Bio/CMOS In­ter­faces Lab­o­ra­to­ry as part of the SENSOTERIC project.

Led by Ro­ber­ta Gras­so and Prof. San­dro Car­ra­ra, along with Dr. Gian Luca Bar­bru­ni, the team has achieved a re­mark­able achievement: com­bin­ing mo­lec­u­lar dy­nam­ics sim­u­la­tions of probe-tar­get bind­ing with TCAD sim­u­la­tions of Re­con­fig­urable Field Ef­fect Tran­sis­tors (RFETs) for bio­sens­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

Tra­di­tion­al field-ef­fect tran­sis­tor bio­sen­sors face a fun­da­men­tal lim­i­ta­tion: fixed chan­nel dop­ing re­stricts them to de­tect­ing ei­ther pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive tar­gets. RFETs, based on dop­ing-free nanowires, over­come this con­straint by dy­nam­i­cal­ly switch­ing be­tween n- and p-type modes. The team demon­strat­ed this adapt­abil­i­ty us­ing both neg­a­tive­ly and pos­i­tive­ly charged an­a­lytes with dis­tinct recog­ni­tion el­e­ments – ap­ta­mer and en­zyme – show­cas­ing dual-po­lar­i­ty de­tec­tion through dif­fer­ent bind­ing mech­a­nisms.

At Global TCAD Solutions, we’re proud to have con­tributed with our Minimos-NT tool to this ground­break­ing work.

This multi­scale frame­work pro­vides mech­a­nis­tic in­sight into the sens­ing process and sup­ports ra­tion­al de­sign of RFET-based bio­sen­sors. Be­yond this spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ca­tion, the method­ol­o­gy ap­plies broad­ly to charge-based field-ef­fect bio­sen­sors, en­abling de­vice op­ti­miza­tion and pre­dic­tion of ex­per­i­men­tal­ly ob­serv­able trends.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion ex­em­pli­fies how phys­ics-based TCAD sim­u­la­tion can ac­cel­er­ate in­no­va­tion in emerg­ing de­vice tech­nolo­gies, bridg­ing the gap be­tween mo­lec­u­lar bi­ol­o­gy and semi­con­duc­tor de­vice physics.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ro­ber­ta Gras­so, San­dro Carrara, Gian Luca Barbruni, and the en­tire team at EPFL’s Bio/CMOS In­ter­faces Lab­o­ra­to­ry on this ex­cel­lent work!

SENSOTERIC Project: http://sensoteric.eu/
EPFL Bio/CMOS In­ter­faces Lab: https://www.epfl.ch/en
Learn more about GTS: https://www.globaltcad.com/