Biosensors boost from new organic semiconducting material
An international team has developed a new organic semiconducting material that is claimed to outperform current options for the next generation of biosensors.
According to researcher leaders KAUST, research effort is being put into novel types of biosensors that interact directly with the body to detect key biochemicals and serve as indicators of health and disease.
"For a sensor to be compatible with the body, we need to use soft organic materials with mechanical properties that match those of biological tissues," said Rawad Hallani, a former research scientist in the KAUST team, who developed the polymer along with researchers at universities in the UK and US.
According to Hallani, the polymer is designed for use in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). For these types of devices, the polymer should allow specific ions and biochemical compounds to permeate into the polymer and dope it, which can modulate its electrochemical semiconducting properties. "The fluctuation in the electrochemical properties is what we are actually measuring as an output signal of the OECT," he said in a statement.
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