Ultra-Low-Cost Integrated Silicon-based Transducer for On-Site, Genetic Detection of Pathogens

Estefania Nunez-Bajo; Michael Kasimatis; Yasin Cotur; Tarek Asfour; Alex Collins; Ugur Tanriverdi; Max Grell; Matti Kaisti; Guglielmo Senesi; Karen Stevenson; Firat Guder

In the future, we will design a handheld analyzer and include all electronics needed for the operation of TriSilix in the same device to simplify and enable its use in the field (currently the potentiostat for electrochemical NA sensing and driver electronics for heating + temperature sensing are separate). We will also add capabilities to communicate with smartphones to have access to the cloud so that the result of each diagnostic test can be passed to health agencies remotely. 37, 38 To enable on-site testing, we will implement on-chip lysis capabilities (such as mechanical 39 or heatinduced cell lysis 40 ) to analyze the samples taken directly from the subject without further sample prep. We will also implement on-chip reverse transcription to enable analysis of RNA. TriSilix would be particularly useful in emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where rapid, early, on-site detection of the virus would accelerate intervention and reduce the spread of the pathogen.