A novel silicon based mags-biosensor for nucleic acid detection by magnetoelectronic transduction

We developed a novel silicon biosensor based on magnetoelectronic transduction (MAGS) for nucleic acid detection. The mags-biosensor is a planar device composed by a primary micro-coil, and two secondary coils which produce a differential voltage due to the induced magnetic field. The presence of magnetic material over one of the secondary coils causes variations of induced magnetic field density that in turn results in a total output voltage different from zero. The voltage variation, therefore, is a measure of the amount of magnetic material present in the active zone. A device sensitivity of 5.1 mV/ng and a resolution of 0.008 ng have been observed. The biosensor also presents a micro-heater and a thermal sensor respectively to set and read-out the chip temperature: this aspect enables the device to be used for several biochemical applications that need temperature control and activation such for example nucleic acid amplification (real-time PCR), antigen- antibody detection (immune-assay) and SNP detection.