Field-Effect Transistors: Current Advances and Challenges in Bringing them at Point-of-Care

Portable, facile and accurate detection of biomarkers is essential for the development of clinically relevant and commercially viable point-of-care diagnostic devices. Such diagnostic solutions have and are constantly transforming the healthcare, environmental monitoring and food safety industries. The ever growing demand for devices with higher sensitivity along with cost effective packaging has put tremendous pressure on the field of biosensors. This demand for ever more parallel detection with lower manufacturing costs has to be satisfied by employing semiconductor technologies. Field-effect transistors have played an instrumental role in the development of various biosensing techniques both as sensors and as enablers for other electronic and electrochemical techniques. This chapter reviews the application of field-effect transistors as transducer elements for biosensing applications (BioFETs), recent advances in BioFETs using novel semiconductor technologies and nanomaterials, the role of standard FETs in addressing large arrays of electrochemical sensors, and the challenges in circuitry and integration faced by electronic biosensing arrays.