12^th Euro Biosensors & Bioelectronics Congress

Transducers in Biosensors

A bio transducer is the recognition-transduction component of a biosensor system. It consists of two intimately coupled parts; a bio-recognition layer and a physicochemical transducer, which acting together converts a biochemical signal to an electronic or optical signal. Electronic Biosensing offers significant advantages over optical, biochemical and biophysical analysis, in terms of high sensitivity and new sensing mechanisms, high spatial resolution for localized detection, facile integration with standard water-scale semiconductor processing and label-free, real-time detection in a nondestructive manner. Gravimetric biosensors use the basic principle of a response to a change in mass. Most gravimetric biosensors use thin piezoelectric quartz crystals, either as resonating crystals (QCM), or as bulk/surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. Pyro electric biosensors generate an electric current as a result of a temperature change. This differential induces a polarization in the substance, producing a dipole moment in the direction of the temperature gradient. The result is a net voltage across the material.