RESUMEN
Integrating microfluidics with biosensors is of great research interest with the increasing trend of lab-on-the chip and point-of-care devices. Though there have been numerous studies performed relating microfluidics to the biosensing mechanisms, the study of the sensitivity variation due to microfluidic flow is very much limited. In this paper, the sensitivity of interdigitated electrodes was evaluated at the static drop condition and the microfluidic flow condition. In addition, this study demonstrates the use of gold nanoparticles to enhance the sensor signal response and provides experimental results of the capacitance difference during cancer antigen-125 (CA-125) antigen-antibody conjugation at multiple concentrations of CA-125 antigens. The experimental results also provide evidence of disease-specific detection of CA-125 antigen at multiple concentrations with the increase in capacitive signal response proportional to the concentration of the CA-125 antigens. The capacitive signal response of antigen-antibody conjugation on interdigitate electrodes has been enhanced by approximately 2.8 times (from 260.80 to 736.33 pF at 20 kHz frequency) in static drop condition and approximately 2.5 times (from 205.85 to 518.48 pF at 20 kHz frequency) in microfluidic flow condition with gold nanoparticle-coating. The capacitive signal response is observed to decrease at microfluidic flow condition at both plain interdigitated electrodes (from 260.80 to 205.85 pF at 20 kHz frequency) and gold nano particle coated interdigitated electrodes (from 736.33 to 518.48 pF at 20 kHz frequency), due to the strong shear effect compared to static drop condition. However, the microfluidic channel in the biosensor has the potential to increase the signal to noise ratio due to plasma separation from the whole blood and lead to the increase concentration of the biomarkers in the blood volume for sensing.
RESUMEN
In this paper, we report our study on high-performance III-nitride nanowire light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on copper (Cu) substrates via the substrate-transfer process. Nanowire LED structures were first grown on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Subsequently, the SOI substrate was removed by combining dry- and wet-etching processes. Compared to conventional nanowire LEDs on Si, the nanowire LEDs on Cu exhibit several advantages, including more efficient thermal management and enhanced light-extraction efficiency (LEE) because of the usage of metal reflectors and highly thermally conductive metal substrates. The LED on Cu, therefore, has stronger photoluminescence, electroluminescence intensities, and better current-voltage characteristics compared to the conventional nanowire LED on Si. Our simulation results further confirm the improved device performance of LEDs on Cu, compared to LEDs on Si. The LEE of the nanowire LED on Cu is nine times higher than that of the LED on Si at the same nanowire radius of 60 nm and spacing of 130 nm. Moreover, by engineering the device-active region, we achieved high-brightness phosphor-free LEDs on Cu with highly stable white-light emission and high color-rendering index of â¼95, showing their promising applications in general lighting, flexible displays, and wearable applications.