Integrated Nanoscale Nanowire Correlated Electronic Nanosensing Technology (INNOCENT)

Development of highly-integrated, ultra-sensitive real-time electronic sensor arrays for detection of chemical and biological threats has been carried out by exploiting the unique electronic properties and integration potential of nanowire electronic devices. Silicon nanowires have been developed and assembled into arrays of sensor elements that provide highly-robust and specific ultra-sensitive species identification while at the same time dramatically reducing false positives. Sensor modalities developed in this project are based on nanowire field-effect transistors, where unique specificities of sensor elements for chemical and biological threats has been achieved through specific surface modification using designed chemical and biological receptors for threats of interest. Experiments have demonstrated biothreat (viruses and toxins) detection at better than 1 picomolar sensitivity, detection chemical (explosive) threats at better than 100 parts per billion sensitivity, simultaneous multiplexed detection from ten or more addressable nanowire sensing elements, and moreover, signal processing algorithms that allow for discrimination of real-false signals in presence of noise were developed.