Surface Generated Acoustic Wave Biosensors for the Detection of Pathogens: A Review

Abstract

This review presents a deep insight into the Surface Generated Acoustic Wave (SGAW) technology for biosensing applications, based on more than 40 years of technological and scientific developments. In the last 20 years, SGAWs have been attracting the attention of the biochemical scientific community, due to the fact that some of these devices -Shear Horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave (SH-SAW), Surface Transverse Wave (STW), Love Wave (LW), Flexural Plate Wave (FPW), Shear Horizontal Acoustic Plate Mode (SH-APM) and Layered Guided Acoustic Plate Mode (LG-APM) -have demonstrated a high sensitivity in the detection of biorelevant molecules in liquid media. In addition, complementary efforts to improve the sensing films have been done during these years. All these developments have been made with the aim of achieving, in a future, a highly sensitive, low cost, small size, multi-channel, portable, reliable and commercially established SGAW biosensor. A setup with these features could significantly contribute to future developments in the health, food and environmental industries. The second purpose of this work is to describe the state-of-the-art of SGAW biosensors for the detection of pathogens, being this topic an issue of extremely importance for the human health. Finally, the review discuses the commercial availability, trends and future challenges of the SGAW biosensors for such applications.

Characterization of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) piezoelectric properties for Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) device

“…Relevantly, material of substrate will give an effect towards the sensing performance in biosensor field [1,2]. Today, many technology SAW has been used in Biosensor detection.…”

QCM Technology in Biosensors

“…In addition, the wave guide layer in the Love mode biosensor could, in principle, also protect and insulate the IDT from the liquid media which might otherwise be detrimental to the electrode. Therefore, they are frequently utilized to perform bio-sensing in liquid conditions (Lindner, 2008;Jacoby & Vellekoop, 1997;Bisoffi et al, 2008;Andrä et al, 2008;Moll et al, 2007Moll et al, , 2008Branch & Brozik, 2004;Tamarin et al, 2003;Howe & Harding, 2000), arising as the most promising SGAW device for this purpose due to its high mass sensitivity and electrode isolation characteristics from liquid media (Rocha-Gaso et al, 2009;Francis et al, 2005). The mass sensitivity of LW sensors can be evaluated by different techniques based on incremental modifications of the surface density on the sensing area of the device (Francis et al, 2004).…”

Collimation of horizontally polarized shear waves by means of ridge grating supported Love modes

“…[13][14][15][16] In particular, shear horizontal ͑SH͒ polarized modes which do exist on substrates or metal samples when ridges are milled, grown or adsorbed onto them are widely used in connection with viscosity, gas, and ͑bio͒chemical sensing such as nondestructive testing. [17][18][19] The wave motion of a nonpiezoelectric, isotropic elastic material is governed by the general lossless equation of motion:…”