How can chip technology realize electronic sensing of viruses?

Watanabe, H.; Lee, C. A.; Ieee,

Regrettably, COVID-19 taught us how significant the portable virus sensing technology is. Before it, the cost issues and different regulations in various countries have hindered the widespread use of the Point-of-Care Testing (POCT). Suppose we can electronically control it using Si nanotechnology, named e-POCT. Following the concept of IoT sensors, we can expect that a plenty of deployed e-POCTs may retrieve digital data about where, when, how much, and which virus is being spread. The collected digital data (to be BigData) can be analyzed by AI machines to optimize the global distribution of medical resources. The core technology for e-POCT must be an electronic biosensing. It is composed of a controlling system to selectively collect biomolecules (specific to targeted virus) in specimen solutions, oxide films (or membranes, polymers) to adhere specific biomolecules, and a sensing system to convert the adhered biomolecules to electrical signals. The efficiencies and reliabilities of the components are critical to the performance of the virus sensing. The performance can be characterized by the Limit-of-Detection (LoD) and detection time. We propose a concept of electronic sensing systems to substantially improve both LoD and detection time.