Robust Microfluidic Integrated Electrolyte-Gated Organic Field-Effect Transistor Sensors for Rapid, In Situ and Label-Free Monitoring of DNA Hybridization

Electrolyte-gated organic field-effect transistors (EGOFETs) are subject to intense research for biosensing in fluids. The ability of these devices to quantify a variety of chemical and biological molecules sensitively and selectively, but ex situ, has been widely demonstrated. However, continuous monitoring of analyte-receptor interactions in real time by EGOFETs, in high demand for practical applications, has rarely been explored. Here, an EGOFET array integrated with a microfluidic device, for real-time detection of the hybridization of DNA is presented. The integrated devices exhibit highly reproducible electrical performance in the array and can operate under different electrical stresses over >1 h with 85-96% figures of merit retention. The utility of the devices is demonstrated to detect the hybridization of a complementary target DNA in 10 x 10(-3) m phosphate-buffered saline (1x PBS) selectively with a temporal resolution of <1 s in a flow of analyte with no incubation step. The detection time is <30 s and the relative standard deviation of the sensing reproducibility is <15% under the target concentration of 100 x 10(-9) m.