Since the 1970s, a great deal of attention has been paid to the development of semiconductor-based biosensors because of the numerous advantages they offer, including high sensitivity, faster response time, miniaturization, and low-cost manufacturing for quick biospecific analysis with reusable features. Commercial biosensors have become highly desirable in the fields of medicine, food, and environmental monitoring as well as military applications, whereas increasing concerns about food safety and health issues have resulted in the introduction of novel legislative standards for these sensors. Numerous devices have been developed for monitoring biological processes such as nucleic acid hybridization, protein–protein interaction, antigen–antibody bonds, and substrate–enzyme reactions, just to name a few. Since the 1980s, scientific interest moved to the development of semiconductor-based devices, which also include integrated front-end electronics, such as the extended-gate field-effect transistor (EGFET) biosensor, one of the first miniaturized chemical sensors. This work is intended to be a review of the state of the art focused on the development of biosensors and chemosensors based on extended-gate field-effect transistor within the field of bioanalytical applications, which will highlight the most recent research reported in the literature. Moreover, a comparison among the diverse EGFET devices will be presented, giving particular attention to the materials and technologies.

This paper presents a methodology of monitoring respiration pattern using piezoelectric transducer incorporating CMOS integrated circuits for signal processing and data transmission. As a proof of concept, the system has been tested by placing electrodes on human chest using adhesive hydrogel to detect the pulsatile vibration due to respiration. The system can be used either as a wearable device itself or alternatively can be attached to a jacket or a chest belt. The front-end transducer is a piezoelectric material-based sensor, which is comprised of a ferroelectric polymer named polyvinylidene-fluoride (PVDF). PVDF is also biocompatible, which makes the sensor suitable to be used as a wearable device. The charge produced by the sensor is converted to a proportional voltage signal with the help of a charge amplifier designed in a standard 130-nm CMOS process with eight metal and one poly layer. The analog voltage signal acquired from the charge amplifier is then converted into a digital signal using a reconfigurable pipelined analog-to-digital converter for ease of transmission. An impulse-radio ultra-wideband transmitter operating in the frequency range of 3.1-5 GHz is designed for wireless transmission of the data. The smaller footprint, lighter weight, wireless telemetry, and low-cost material along with the low-power integrated CMOS circuitry for signal processing and data transmission make the proposed system an attractive choice for stable respiration monitoring system.

Wearable technologies have established novel strategies for continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, exploiting recent developments in sensors and integrated circuit technology. Advances in dry electrodes fabrication improved the growth of wearable devices. Herein, we present an on-chip integrated ECG signal acquisition system along with dry electrodes for wearable and long-term monitoring. Custom electrodes are fabricated using multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) and Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite on a flexible substrate. A1.5 μW fully-differential operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) with a capacitive-resistive feedback network is designed in 130 nm CMOS process achieving a mid-band gain of 43.09 dB and an input-referred noise of 2.81 μVrms in the range from 0.175 Hz to 1.636 kHz. Reconfigurability of the lower cut-off frequency is achieved by controlling the bias voltage of the triple-well nMOS transistors acting as the feedback pseudoresistor. Electrodes with different surface area and MWCNT concentrations were investigated in a real-time ECG measurement scenario. The recorded signals achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio which spans from 35.7 dB to 38.6 dB with the increasing MWCNT concentration. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system allows for high performance and low-power ECG signal recording for the long-term and wearable applications.

This paper presents a ferroelectric polymer-based temperature sensor designed for microfluidic devices. The integration of the sensor into a system-on-a-chip platform facilitates quick monitoring of localized temperature of a biological fluid, avoiding errors in the evaluation of thermal evolution of the fluid during analysis. The contact temperature sensor is fabricated by combining a thin pyroelectric film together with an infrared source, which stimulates the active element located on the top of the microfluidic channel. An experimental setup was assembled to validate the analytical model and to characterize the response rate of the device. The evaluation procedure and the operating range of the temperature also make this device suitable for applications where the localized temperature monitoring of biological samples is necessary. Additionally, ease of integration with standard microfluidic devices makes the proposed sensor an attractive option for in situ analysis of biological fluids.

Extended-gate field-effect transistor (EGFET) is an electronic interface originally developed as a substitute for an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET). Although the literature shows that commercial off-the-shelf components are widely used for biosensor fabrication, studies on electronic interfaces are still scarce (e.g., noise processes, scaling). Therefore, the incorporation of a custom EGFET can lead to biosensors with optimized performance. In this paper, the design and characterization of a transistor association (TA)-based EGFET was investigated. Prototypes were manufactured using a 130 nm standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and compared with devices presented in recent literature. A DC equivalence with the counterpart involving a single equivalent transistor was observed. Experimental results showed a power consumption of 24.99 mW at 1.2 V supply voltage with a minimum die area of 0.685 × 1.2 mm². The higher aspect ratio devices required a proportionally increased die area and power consumption. Conversely, the input-referred noise showed an opposite trend with a minimum of 176.4 nV_rms over the 0.1 to 10 Hz frequency band for a higher aspect ratio. EGFET as a pH sensor presented further validation of the design with an average voltage sensitivity of 50.3 mV/pH, a maximum current sensitivity of 15.71 mA^1/2/pH, a linearity higher than 99.9%, and the possibility of operating at a lower noise level with a compact design and a low complexity.