Biosensor Design with Molecular Engineering and Nanotechnology

Abstract

The concept of a biosensor is well established and the idea of integrating a molecular recognition layer with a base sensor, such that analyte binding or reaction at the former results in a measureable change (in current or voltage) in the latter has seen many ingenious embodiments. Despite this and the huge amount of research worldwide in biosensors, as outlined in Chap. 2, many challenges still remain in building reliable, long-lived biosensors, especially in the hostile environment of the human body. The enormous potential for in vivo sensing of pathophysiological molecules over time and space has led to many attempts to achieve this and the rewards, both in terms of clinical benefit and improved understanding, cannot be underestimated. As new tools for producing biosensors become available, they are rapidly recruited. In recent years, developments in two areas of science and engineering have provided new opportunities to look again at how biosensors are built and deployed. These developments were not driven by the needs of those building and using biosensors but by much broader scientific and technological trends, which nonetheless have found ready applicability in this area.One of the trends is an increasing knowledge of the structural factors that determine function in biological macromolecules and the other is the appreciation that the properties of materials with a characteristic length scale from 1 to 100 nm are not those expected from dividing macroscopic materials into smaller pieces nor those expected from adding atoms or molecules together. The first of these trends is sometimes referred to as biomolecular engineering and the second as nanotechnology.There are many drivers for the use of molecular engineering and nanotechnology in the design and application of biosensors and the past decade has seen these tools