How to Break the “Fundamental” Limits of Clinical and Wearable/Implantable Bio and Electrochemical Sensors

Muhammad A. Alam
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Modern healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and environmental monitoring rely on the pervasive use of bio and electrochemical sensors. The field is almost 125 years old, yet many foundational questions remain unanswered.  In this talk, I will discuss the essential physics of modern clinical and wearable/implantable nanobiosensors and explain how the responses of classical sensors are fundamentally limited by analyte diffusion towards the sensor surface, screening in the salt-rich environment, non-selective absorption on the sensor surface, and intrinsic variability of the ambient conditions. Recent innovations in material, device, and system suggest that the perceived limits are not fundamental but can be overcome by deeply insightful engineering, such as evaporation-enhanced droplet spectroscopy using superhydrophobic electrodes, nonlinear critical point sensing, self-calibrating potentiometric sensors based on generalized Nernst equation, quorum-sensing, fake-news detection algorithms.

 

About the Speaker: Professor Alam holds the Jai N. Gupta Distinguished professorship at Purdue University, where his research focuses on the physics and technology of semiconductor devices. He is a fellow of IEEE, APS, and AAAS, and his awards include the 2006 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Medal for contributions to device technology, the 2015 SRC Technical Excellence Award for fundamental contributions to reliability physics, and the 2018 IEEE Education Award for worldwide impact of the courses on Electronics, Solar Cells, and Biosensors. More than 500,000 students worldwide have learned some aspects of semiconductor devices from his web-enabled courses.