The Effect of Amino-Phosphate Interactions on the Biosensing Performance of Enzymatic Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

Transduction of Amine-Phosphate Supramolecular Interactions and Biosensing of Acetylcholine through PEDOT-Polyamine Organic Electrochemical Transistors

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are important devices for the development of flexible and wearable sensors due to their flexibility, low power consumption, sensitivity, selectivity, ease of fabrication, and compatibility with other flexible materials. These features enable the creation of comfortable, versatile, and efficient portable devices that can monitor and detect a wide range of parameters for various applications. Herein, we present OECTs based on PEDOT-polyamine thin films for the selective monitoring of phosphate-containing compounds. Our findings reveal that supramolecular single phosphate-amino interaction induces higher changes in the OECT response compared to ATP-amino interactions, even at submillimolar concentrations. The steric character of binding anions plays a crucial role in OECT sensing, resulting in a smaller shift in maximum transconductance voltage and threshold voltage for bulkier binding species. The OECT response reflects not only the polymer/solution interface but also events within the conducting polymer film, where ion transport and concentration are affected by the ion size. Additionally, the investigation of enzyme immobilization reveals the influence of phosphate species on the assembly behavior of acetylcholinesterase (AchE) on PEDOT-PAH OECTs, with increasing phosphate concentrations leading to reduced enzyme anchoring. These findings contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms of OECT sensing and highlight the importance of careful design and optimization of the biosensor interface construction for diverse sensing applications.

Nanoarchitectonics of Vesicle Microreactors for Oscillating ATP Synthesis and Hydrolysis

We construct a compartmentalized nanoarchitecture to regulate bioenergy level. Glucose dehydrogenase, urease and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide are encapsulated inside through liquid-liquid phase separation. ATPase and glucose transporter embedded in hybrid liposomes are attached at the surface. Glucose is transported and converted to gluconic acid catalyzed by glucose dehydrogenase, resulting in an outward proton gradient to drive ATPase for ATP synthesis. In parallel, urease catalyzes hydrolysis of urea to generate ammonia, which leads to an inward proton gradient to drive ATPase for ATP hydrolysis. These processes lead to a change of the direction of proton gradient, thus achieving artificial ATP oscillation. Importantly, the frequency and the amplitude of the oscillation can be programmed. The work explores nanoarchitectonics integrating multiple components to realize artificial and precise oscillation of bioenergy level.

The Future of Nanotechnology-Driven Electrochemical and Electrical Point-of-Care Devices and Diagnostic Tests

Point-of-care (POC) devices have become rising stars in the biosensing field, aiming at prognosis and diagnosis of diseases with a positive impact on the patient but also on healthcare and social care systems. Putting the patient at the center of interest requires the implementation of noninvasive technologies for collecting biofluids and the development of wearable platforms with integrated artificial intelligence-based tools for improved analytical accuracy and wireless readout technologies. Many electrical and electrochemical transducer technologies have been proposed for POC-based sensing, but several necessitate further development before being widely deployable. This review focuses on recent innovations in electrochemical and electrical biosensors and their growth opportunities for nanotechnology-driven multidisciplinary approaches. With a focus on analytical aspects to pave the way for future electrical/electrochemical diagnostics tests, current limitations and drawbacks as well as directions for future developments are highlighted.

Noninvasive and Multiplex Self-Test of Kidney Disease Biomarkers with Graphene-Based Lab-on-a-Chip (G-LOC): Toward Digital Diagnostics in the Hands of Patients

Chronic kidney disease is one of the major health issues worldwide. However, diagnosis is now highly centralized in large laboratories, resulting in low access to patient monitoring and poor personalized treatments. This work reports the development of a graphene-based lab-on-a-chip (G-LOC) for the digital testing of renal function biomarkers in serum and saliva samples. G-LOC integrates multiple bioelectronic sensors with a microfluidic system that enables multiplex self-testing of urea, potassium, sodium, and chloride. The linearity, limit of detection (LOD), accuracy, and coefficient of variability (CV) were studied. Accuracy values higher than 95.5% and CV lower than 9% were obtained for all of the biomarkers. The analytical performance was compared against three reference lab benchtop analyzers by measuring healthy- and renal-failure-level samples of serum. From receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plots, sensitivities (%) of 99.7, 97.6, 99.1, and 89.0 were obtained for urea, potassium, sodium, and chloride, respectively. Then, the test was evaluated in noninvasive saliva samples and compared against reference methods. Correlation and Bland-Altman plots showed good correlation and agreement of the G-LOC with the reference methods. It is noteworthy that the precision of G-LOC was similar to better than benchtop lab analyzers, with the advantage of being highly portable. Finally, a user testing study was conducted. The analytical performance obtained with untrained volunteers was similar to that obtained with trained chemists. Additionally, based on a user experience survey, G-LOC was found to have very simple usability and would be suitable for at-home diagnostics.

Interface-Engineered Field-Effect Transistor Electronic Devices for Biosensing

Promising advances in molecular medicine have promoted the urgent requirement for reliable and sensitive diagnostic tools. Electronic biosensing devices based on field-effect transistors (FETs) exhibit a wide range of benefits, including rapid and label-free detection, high sensitivity, easy operation, and capability of integration, possessing significant potential for application in disease screening and health monitoring. In this perspective, the tremendous efforts and achievements in the development of high-performance FET biosensors in the past decade are summarized, with emphasis on the interface engineering of FET-based electrical platforms for biomolecule identification. First, an overview of engineering strategies for interface modulation and recognition element design is discussed in detail. For a further step, the applications of FET-based electrical devices for in vitro detection and real-time monitoring in biological systems are comprehensively reviewed. Finally, the key opportunities and challenges of FET-based electronic devices in biosensing are discussed. It is anticipated that a comprehensive understanding of interface engineering strategies in FET biosensors will inspire additional techniques for developing highly sensitive, specific, and stable FET biosensors as well as emerging designs for next-generation biosensing electronics.

Field-effect transistors engineered via solution-based layer-by-layer nanoarchitectonics

The layer-by-layer (LbL) technique has been proven to be one of the most versatile approaches in order to fabricate functional nanofilms. The use of simple and inexpensive procedures as well as the possibility to incorporate a very wide range of materials through different interactions have driven its application in a wide range of fields. On the other hand, field-effect transistors (FETs) are certainly among the most important elements in electronics. The ability to modulate the flowing current between a source and a drain electrode via the voltage applied to the gate electrode endow these devices to switch or amplify electronic signals, being vital in all of our everyday electronic devices. In this topical review, we highlight different research efforts to engineer field-effect transistors using the LbL assembly approach. We firstly discuss on the engineering of the channel material of transistors via the LbL technique. Next, the deposition of dielectric materials through this approach is reviewed, allowing the development of high-performance electronic components. Finally, the application of the LbL approach to fabricate FETs-based biosensing devices is also discussed, as well as the improvement of the transistor's interfacial sensitivity by the engineering of the semiconductor with polyelectrolyte multilayers.

Phosphates Transfer in Pristine and Modified CJMA-2 Membrane during Electrodialysis Processing of NaxH(3-x)PO4 Solutions with pH from 4.5 to 9.9

Phosphate recovery from different second streams using electrodialysis (ED) is a promising step to a nutrients circular economy. However, the relatively low ED performance hinders the widespread adoption of this environmentally sound method. The formation of "bonded species" between phosphates and the weakly basic fixed groups (primary and secondary amines) of the anion exchange membrane can be the cause of decrease in current efficiency and increase in energy consumption. ED processing of Na_xH_(3-x)PO₄ alkaline solutions and the use of intense current modes promote the formation of a bipolar junction from negatively charged bound species and positively charged fixed groups. This phenomenon causes a change in the shape of current-voltage curves, increase in resistance, and an enhancement in proton generation during long-term operation of anion-exchange membrane with weakly basic fixed groups. Shielding of primary and secondary amines with a modifier containing quaternary ammonium bases significantly improves ED performance in the recovery of phosphates from Na_xH_(3-x)PO₄ solution with pH 4.5. Indeed, in the limiting and underlimiting current modes, 40% of phosphates are recovered 1.3 times faster, and energy consumption is reduced by 1.9 times in the case of the modified membrane compared to the pristine one. Studies were performed using a new commercial anion exchange membrane CJMA-2.

Overcoming Debye length limitations: Three-dimensional wrinkled graphene field-effect transistor for ultra-sensitive adenosine triphosphate detection

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is closely related to the pathogenesis of certain diseases, so the detection of trace ATP is of great significance to disease diagnosis and drug development. Graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) have been proven to be a promising platform for the rapid and accurate detection of small molecules, while the Debye shielding limits the sensitive detection in real samples. Here, a three-dimensional wrinkled graphene field-effect transistor (3D WG-FET) biosensor for ultra-sensitive detection of ATP is demonstrated. The lowest detection limit of 3D WG-FET for analyzing ATP is down to 3.01 aM, which is much lower than the reported results. In addition, the 3D WG-FET biosensor shows a good linear electrical response to ATP concentrations in a broad range of detection from 10 aM to 10 pM. Meanwhile, we achieved ultra-sensitive (LOD: 10 aM) and quantitative (range from 10 aM to 100 fM) measurements of ATP in human serum. The 3D WG-FET also exhibits high specificity. This work may provide a novel approach to improve the sensitivity for the detection of ATP in complex biological matrix, showing a broad application value for early clinical diagnosis and food health monitoring.

Electronic supplementary materials

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11467-023-1281-7 and https://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-023-1281-7.

How Chemical Nature of Fixed Groups of Anion-Exchange Membranes Affects the Performance of Electrodialysis of Phosphate-Containing Solutions?

Innovative ion exchange membranes have become commercially available in recent years. However, information about their structural and transport characteristics is often extremely insufficient. To address this issue, homogeneous anion exchange membranes with the trade names ASE, CJMA-3 and CJMA-6 have been investigated in Na_xH_(3-x)PO₄ solutions with pH 4.4 ± 0.1, 6.6 and 10.0 ± 0.2, as well as NaCl solutions with pH 5.5 ± 0.1. Using IR spectroscopy and processing the concentration dependences of the electrical conductivity of these membranes in NaCl solutions, it was shown that ASE has a highly cross-linked aromatic matrix and mainly contains quaternary ammonium groups. Other membranes have a less cross-linked aliphatic matrix based on polyvinylidene fluoride (CJMA-3) or polyolefin (CJMA-6) and contain quaternary amines (CJMA-3) or a mixture of strongly basic (quaternary) and weakly basic (secondary) amines (CJMA-6). As expected, in dilute solutions of NaCl, the conductivity of membranes increases with an increase in their ion-exchange capacity: CJMA-6 < CJMA-3 << ASE. Weakly basic amines appear to form bound species with proton-containing phosphoric acid anions. This phenomenon causes a decrease in the electrical conductivity of CJMA-6 membranes compared to other studied membranes in phosphate-containing solutions. In addition, the formation of the neutral and negatively charged bound species suppresses the generation of protons by the "acid dissociation" mechanism. Moreover, when the membrane is operated in overlimiting current modes and/or in alkaline solutions, a bipolar junction is formed at the CJMA- 6/depleted solution interface. The CJMA-6 current-voltage curve becomes similar to the well-known curves for bipolar membranes, and water splitting intensifies in underlimiting and overlimiting modes. As a result, energy consumption for electrodialysis recovery of phosphates from aqueous solutions almost doubles when using the CJMA-6 membrane compared to the CJMA-3 membrane.

Interface Engineering of "Clickable" Organic Electrochemical Transistors toward Biosensing Devices

"Clickable" organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) allow the reliable and straightforward functionalization of electronic devices through the well-known click chemistry toolbox. In this work, we study various aspects of the click chemistry-based interface engineering of "clickable" OECTs. First, different channel architectures are investigated, showing that PEDOT-N₃ films can properly work as a channel of the transistors. Furthermore, the Cu(I)-catalyzed click reaction of ethynyl-ferrocene is studied under different reaction conditions, endowing the spatial control of the functionalization. The strain-promoted and catalyst-free cycloaddition of a dibenzocyclooctyne-derivatized poly-l-lysine (PLL-DBCO) is also performed on the OECTs and validated by a fiber optic (FO)-SPR setup. The further immobilization of an azido-modified HD22 aptamer yields OECT-based biosensors that are employed for the recognition of thrombin. Finally, their performance is evaluated against previously reported architectures, showing higher density of the immobilized HD22 aptamer, and originating similar K_D values and higher maximum signal change upon analyte recognition.