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Electronic Readout Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay with Organic Field-Effect Transistors as a Preeclampsia Prognostic Mallory L. Hammock, Oren Knopfmacher, Tse Nga Ng, Jeffrey B.-H. Tok, and Zhenan Bao* While laboratory-based diagnostic tests have been the status quo for decades, in-home testing is increasingly being favored by healthcare providers.[1] At the core of this trend is a need for portable, affordable, sensitive, and real-time diagnostics that enable point-of-care testing. While optical-based assays (e.g., fluorescence, absorbance, Raman) have predominated as a result of their tremendous sensitivities,[2] they require bulky detection equipment and access to power supplies. In recent decades, organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have emerged as an important class of chemical and biological sensors to meet the challenges presented by the changing healthcare landscape.[3,4] Electronic sensors fabricated from organic semiconductors are low-cost, as they are compatible with large-area and low-temperature processing techniques (e.g., inkjet printing).[5] Furthermore, OFETs are capable of directly transducing a (bio) chemical binding event or reaction into an electronic signal, facilitating their integration into circuits for real-time, digital readout.[4] Finally, OFETs are inherently portable since the transistor-based sensor element can be miniaturized, allowing for low power consumption.[3,6] Taken together, these properties enable OFETs to dramatically improve upon the plethora of available sensing technologies. For practical applications, the real-time detection of biologically relevant analytes necessarily requires operation in an aqueous environment. We have previously reported a number of selective, water-stable, and real-time OFET sensors,[6–8] including those that are compatible with solution-processing techniques.[9] Furthermore, we have determined that the specific detection of charged biomarkers in solutions of physiological ionic strength is not straightforward due to the extremely short Debye length (
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Electronic Readout Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay with Organic Field-Effect Transistors as a Preeclampsia Prognostic Mallory L. Hammock, Oren Knopfmacher, Tse Nga Ng, Jeffrey B.-H. Tok, and Zhenan Bao* While laboratory-based diagnostic tests have been the status quo for decades, in-home testing is increasingly being favored by healthcare providers.[1] At the core of this trend is a need for portable, affordable, sensitive, and real-time diagnostics that enable point-of-care testing. While optical-based assays (e.g., fluorescence, absorbance, Raman) have predominated as a result of their tremendous sensitivities,[2] they require bulky detection equipment and access to power supplies. In recent decades, organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have emerged as an important class of chemical and biological sensors to meet the challenges presented by the changing healthcare landscape.[3,4] Electronic sensors fabricated from organic semiconductors are low-cost, as they are compatible with large-area and low-temperature processing techniques (e.g., inkjet printing).[5] Furthermore, OFETs are capable of directly transducing a (bio) chemical binding event or reaction into an electronic signal, facilitating their integration into circuits for real-time, digital readout.[4] Finally, OFETs are inherently portable since the transistor-based sensor element can be miniaturized, allowing for low power consumption.[3,6] Taken together, these properties enable OFETs to dramatically improve upon the plethora of available sensing technologies. For practical applications, the real-time detection of biologically relevant analytes necessarily requires operation in an aqueous environment. We have previously reported a number of selective, water-stable, and real-time OFET sensors,[6–8] including those that are compatible with solution-processing techniques.[9] Furthermore, we have determined that the specific detection of charged biomarkers in solutions of physiological ionic strength is not straightforward due to the extremely short Debye length (
