An accurate, high-speed, portable bifunctional electrical detector for COVID-19

• Published in: Science China materials Vol. 64; no. 3; pp. 739 - 747
• Main Authors: Ke, Guojun, Su, Dingkai, Li, Yu, Zhao, Yu, Wang, Honggang, Liu, Wanjian, Li, Man, Yang, Zhiting, Xiao, Fang, Yuan, Yao, Huang, Fei, Mo, Fanyang, Wang, Peng, Guo, Xuefeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Science China Press 01.03.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Antibodies; Antigens; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Diagnostic systems; Graphene; Immunoassay; Materials Science; Nucleic acids; Optics; Pandemics; Polymerase chain reaction; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Transistors; Viral diseases; COVID-19; nucleic acid detection; point-of-care testing; biosensor; immunoassay
• ISSN: 2095-8226; 2199-4501
• DOI: 10.1007/s40843-020-1577-y

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, has rapidly spread and caused a severe global pandemic. Because no specific drugs are available for COVID-19 and few vaccines are available for SARS-CoV-2, accurate and rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 has been the most crucial measure to control this pandemic. Here, we developed a portable bifunctional electrical detector based on graphene fieldeffect transistors for SARS-CoV-2 through either nucleic acid hybridization or antigen-antibody protein interaction, with ultra-low limits of detection of ~0.1 and ~1 fg mL −1 in phosphate buffer saline, respectively. We validated our method by assessment of RNA extracts from the oropharyngeal swabs of ten COVID-19 patients and eight healthy subjects, and the IgM/IgG antibodies from serum specimens of six COVID-19 patients and three healthy subjects. Here we show that the diagnostic results are in excellent agreement with the findings of polymerase chain reaction-based optical methods; they also exhibit rapid detection speed (~10 min for nucleic acid detection and ~5 min for immunoassay). Therefore, our assay provides an efficient, accurate tool for high-throughput point-of-care testing.