Design and Performance of Semiconductor-Biosensor

Subhadeep Mukhopadhyay; Avrajyoti Dutta

Abstract

In this work, a high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) based biosensor is designed to detect the virus-protein. In this work, all the simulation-studies are carried out in the SILVACO-ATLAS physical simulator using the following models: Shockley Read Hall (SRH), band gap narrowing, Auger recombination, and Fermi Dirac statistics. Newton trap numerical solver is used in the device simulation. Conduction band engineering of the biosensor is studied. DC and RF properties of the designed biosensor are studied. Sensitivity of the biosensor is studied corresponding to electric field, surface potential, drain current, transconductance, and current gain cut-off frequency. Sufficient sensitivity is obtained corresponding to each electrical parameter to detect the virus-protein. We have studied the sensitivity of biosensor by considering only dielectric constant of protein biomolecules since sharp variation in dielectric constant of different protein biomolecules shows a good change in electrical behaviour of designed biosensor. In the whole simulation work, the range of dielectric constant (K) of virus-protein is considered as 2 to 4. Air (K=1) is considered as reference dielectric in the simulation. This work may be helpful to design and experimentally fabricate the HEMT based biosensor. To study the sensing kinetics, we have to observe the biosensor in wet environment after fabrication. Hence, this is our one future work to fabricate and study the biosensor in wet environment.

Abstract

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