Abstract
Low-cost biosensors that can rapidly and widely detect viruses are critical for faster diagnosis and treatment decision-making, especially for infections. The commonly used field-effect transistor is sensitive to the biomarker's detection but struggles with precise detection, particularly of nontargets such as ions and proteins. To overcome this limitation, we developed a field-effect transistor biosensor design based on MXene-graphene materials to increase the accuracy and sensitivity of virus detection. Based on the hybridization process between two complementary DNA strands, single-stranded nucleic acids were immobilized on the sensing surface via 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and glutaraldehyde to capture the nucleic acids of the target virus. The addition of the MXene layer provides a reduced system capacitance and tuned bandgap compared to that of stand-alone graphene. This tuning can significantly enhance the sensitivity of the developed platform. The SARS-CoV-2 and its Omicron variant were used to validate the developed biosensor. The results showed high accuracy with detection limits as low as 1 x 10-21 and 1 x 10-22 mol/L (60.2 and 6.02 copies/L equivalently), for SARS-CoV-2 and its Omicron variant, respectively. Twenty-four clinical tests were also conducted using the developed ssDNA-MXene-graphene biosensors with patients' nasopharyngeal swab samples. The biosensor's results closely matched those of the reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) detection but with a significantly shorter detection time, demonstrating the sensors' real-time, in situ, practical application. This result also demonstrates the promising future of MXene-based biosensors for virus detection using nucleic acid probes.
Recommended Citation
J. Li and Y. Zhang and C. Wei and Y. Li and Z. Peng and H. Y. Chuang and L. Pearce and A. Boon and Y. Huang and D. H. Kim and R. Wang and C. Wu, "Advanced Detection of SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron Variants Via MXene-Graphene Hybrid Biosensors Utilizing Nucleic Acid Probes," ACS Applied Nano Materials, American Chemical Society, Jan 2024.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.4c05198
Department(s)
Biological Sciences
Second Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Third Department
Chemistry
Keywords and Phrases
clinical tests; field-effect transistor biosensor; Omicron variant; SARS-CoV-2; ssDNA-MXene-graphene
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
2574-0970
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 American Chemical Society, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2024
Comments
National Science Foundation, Grant 2414716