Multiple MoS2 Transistors for Sensing Molecule Interaction Kinetics

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 10546
• Main Authors: Nam, Hongsuk, Oh, Bo-Ram, Chen, Pengyu, Chen, Mikai, Wi, Sungjin, Wan, Wenjie, Kurabayashi, Katsuo, Liang, Xiaogan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 27.05.2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 142/126; 639/301/357/995; 639/925/357/1018; 639/925/927/1007; 96/10; 96/21; Antibodies - immunology; Biosensing Techniques - instrumentation; Biosensing Techniques - methods; Biosensors; Disulfides - chemistry; Equipment Design; Humanities and Social Sciences; Kinetics; Limit of Detection; Molybdenum - chemistry; multidisciplinary; Science; Transistors; Transistors, Electronic; Tumor necrosis factor; Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha - analysis; Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha - immunology; Tumor necrosis factor-TNF
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep10546

Atomically layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) exhibit a significant potential to enable next-generation low-cost transistor biosensors that permit single-molecule-level quantification of biomolecules. To realize such potential biosensing capability, device-oriented research is needed for calibrating the sensor responses to enable the quantification of the affinities/kinetics of biomolecule interactions. In this work, we demonstrated MoS 2 -based transistor biosensors capable of detecting tumor necrosis factor – alpha (TNF-α) with a detection limit as low as 60 fM. Such a detection limit was achieved in both linear and subthreshold regimes of MoS 2 transistors. In both regimes, all sets of transistors exhibited consistent calibrated responses with respect to TNF-α concentration and they resulted in a standard curve, from which the equilibrium constant of the antibody-(TNF-α) pair was extracted to be K D  = 369 ± 48 fM. Based on this calibrated sensor model, the time-dependent binding kinetics was also measured and the association/dissociation rates of the antibody-(TNF-α) pair were extracted to be (5.03 ± 0.16) × 10 8  M −1 s −1 and (1.97 ± 0.08) × 10 −4  s −1 , respectively. This work advanced the critical device physics for leveraging the excellent electronic/structural properties of TMDCs in biosensing applications as well as the research capability in analyzing the biomolecule interactions with fM-level sensitivities.