Wireless biosensors based on oxidation and reduction of nanoparticles

About the project

Electrochemical biosensors based on redox enzymes have earned a considerable market share. Glucose biosensor market alone will reach USD 31 billion by year 2022. Additionally, a considerable biosensor market share is taken also by redox enzyme based biosensors for cholesterol, lactate, glutamate, ascorbate, ketones, ethanol, etc. They help millions of people to manage their diseases including diabetes. Modern application of these biosensors could be dramatically broadened if they could be integrated into IoT networks or made easy functional on RFID tags. This opportunity is, however, severely limited by the need of the battery (supply of energy) for the biosensor functioning.

To make redox enzyme based principle function in a battery-less mode on RFID tag, the applicant proposes a biosensor-RFID tag design where a biologically driven redox reaction invokes oxidation or reduction of RFID tag antenna made from metallic nanoparticles. The biologically driven oxidation of reduction of the metallic nanoparticles and the biosensor-RFID tag design enable construction of   battery-less and wireless biosensors with extremely high sensitivity. The significance of the proposed research is in the universality and massive applicability of the proposed biosensor-RFID tags for detection of medically relevant compounds and bacteria.