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Bioelectronics and Biosensors in Diagnostics, Biotechnology and Clinical Research: Challenges and Opportunities

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A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioelectronics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2023) | Viewed by 8761

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Nicola Francesco Lopomo

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Guest Editor

Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano Milano, 20158 Milan, Italy
Interests: bioengineering; biosensors; wearables; rehabilitation; ergonomics; technologies for health; biomechanics; clinical biomechanics; computer-aided surgery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Sarah Tonello

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Guest Editor

Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
Interests: biosensors; electrochemical biosensing; cell culture electrical monitoring; tissue engineering; printed electronics for biotechnological applications; points of care development; biosignal processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Michela Borghetti

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Guest Editor

Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, 25126 Brescia, Italy
Interests: sensors; innovative fabrication technologies; printed sensor applications; flexible/stretchable electronics; printed sensor system; additive manufacturing; metrological characterization of sensors for biomedical and industrial applications; signal processing for printed sensors and smart objects; printed sensors integrated on wearable and IoT devices; hybrid printed electronics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Jichai Jeong

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Guest Editor

Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea
Interests: biosignal processing; EEG-fNIRS multimodality; BCI

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Biosensors’ relevance for the investigation of pathophysiological processes is widely recognized in several fields, including basic research, regenerative medicine, in-hospital analyses, and home-based points-of-care. In particular, the possibility of relying on sensitive, robust, and low-cost biosensors represents a significant challenge that could bring about a revolution in the early diagnosis of degenerative and chronic pathologies, in the treatment and control of infectious diseases, and in the development of novel solutions for tissue engineering.

The potential of biosensors can be fully exploited only by integrating results from inter-disciplinary areas of research, including biosensors production, overall system design, and data analysis.

In this context, recent attention has been addressed to novel strategies for lowering the costs of sensitive biosensors fabrication, to customized hardware for ensuring effective conditioning in integrated solutions, and, finally, to advanced signal processing techniques to enhance the performances of the developed platforms from a multi-parametric perspective (e.g., deep learning, multi-sensor networks).

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect the most recent developments in this field, providing a comprehensive picture of the most promising trends and of the open challenges still to be overcome for strengthening the role of biosensors in the study, detection, and control of pathophysiological processes.

Both research papers and review articles covering the following topics are welcome to this Special Issue:

Novel materials and methods for biosensor fabrication (e.g., conductive scaffolds, printed electronics)
Novel materials to enhance biosensors’ sensitivity (e.g., nanostructures, conductive/imprinted polymers)
Customized hardware for biosensors’ conditioning (e.g., wireless point-of-care solutions, portable analysis platforms)
Low-cost, disposable sensors for single-use analysis (e.g., paper-based sensors)
Integration of biosensors with microfluidic circuits (e.g., point-of-care solutions, lab-on-a-chip)
Integration of biosensors in standalone solutions (e.g., lab-on-a-chip)
Non-invasive approaches for monitoring cell culture models
Innovative electronic approaches for biomarker detection
Advanced signal processing techniques for improving data analysis
Machine learning approaches for the detection of diseases and changes in physiological parameters
Innovative methodologies for biosensor validation

Prof. Dr. Nicola Francesco Lopomo
Dr. Sarah Tonello
Dr. Michela Borghetti
Prof. Dr. Jichai Jeong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Biosensors and bioelectronics
Printed electronics for biosensing
Biomaterials for biosensors
Biomarkers detection
Cell culture monitoring
Electrochemical sensors
Non-invasive sensing
Nanostructured sensors
Points of care
Advanced signal processing/machine learning for biotechnology

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 1859 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Solution pH Effect on Drain-Gate Characteristics of SOI FET Biosensor

by Anastasia Bulgakova, Anton Berdyugin, Olga Naumova, Boris Fomin, Dmitrii Pyshnyi, Alexey Chubarov, Elena Dmitrienko and Alexander Lomzov

Electronics 2023, 12(3), 777; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12030777 - 3 Feb 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1595

Abstract

Nanowire or nanobelt sensors based on silicon-on-insulator field-effect transistors (SOI-FETs) are one of the leading directions of label-free biosensors. An essential issue in this device construction type is obtaining reproducible results from electrochemical measurements. It is affected by many factors, including the measuring solution and the design parameters of the sensor. The biosensor surface should be charged minimally for the highest sensitivity and maximum effect from interaction with other charged molecules. Therefore, the pH value should be chosen so that the surface has a minimum charge. Here, we studied the SOI-FET sensor containing 12 nanobelt elements concatenated on a single substrate. Two types of sensing elements of similar design and different widths (0.2 or 3 μm) were located in the chips. The drain-gate measurements of wires with a width of 3 µm are sufficiently reproducible for the entire chip to obtain measurement statistics in air and deionized water. For the pH values from 3 to 12, we found significant changes in source-drain characteristics of nanobelts, which reach the plateau at pH values of 7 and higher. High pH sensitivity (ca. 1500 and 970 mV/pH) was observed in sensors of 3 μm and 0.2 μm in width in the range of pH values from 3 to 7. We found a higher “on” current to “off” current ratio for wide wires. At all studied pH values, I_on/I_off was up to 4600 and 30,800 for 0.2 and 3 μm wires, respectively. In the scheme on the source-drain current measurements at fixed gate voltages, the highest sensitivity to the pH changes reaches a gate voltage of 13 and 19 V for 0.2 μm and 3 μm sensors, respectively. In summary, the most suitable is 3 μm nanobelt sensing elements for the reliable analysis of biomolecules and measurements at pH over 7. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioelectronics and Biosensors in Diagnostics, Biotechnology and Clinical Research: Challenges and Opportunities)

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9 pages, 2265 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Textile Antenna-Sensor for In Vitro Diagnostics of Diabetes

by Mariam El Gharbi, Raúl Fernández-García and Ignacio Gil

Electronics 2021, 10(13), 1570; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10131570 - 30 Jun 2021

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2727

Abstract

In this paper, a feasibility study of a microwave antenna-based sensor is proposed for in vitro experiments for monitoring blood glucose levels. The proposed device consists of a square-ring incorporated within a fully textile monopole antenna to absorb and sense different glucose concentrations, covering patients with different diabetic conditions. The designed antenna-sensor is optimized to operate at 2.4 GHz. The sensing principle is based on the resonance frequency shift of the reflection response of the antenna-based sensor under different glucose levels. The experiments were carried out with blood mimicking by means of aqueous solutions, using D(+)- glucose/water in different concentrations for various diabetic conditions of type-2 diabetes. The performance of the embroidered antenna-based sensor is characterized and validated using a convenient setup for in vitro measurements. The results demonstrated the ability of the proposed antenna-based sensor to cover all the glucose levels of the diabetes range, including hypoglycemia (10–70 mg/dL), normoglycemia (80–110 mg/dL) and hyperglycemia (130–190 mg/dL) with a sensitivity of 350 kHz/(mg/dL). Besides its ability to detect different glucose concentrations of various diabetic conditions, the proposed antenna-sensor presents diverse features such as a simplistic design, compact size, wearability and low cost. The proposed textile device demonstrates a proof of concept for efficient in vitro blood glucose level measurements and diagnostics of diabetes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioelectronics and Biosensors in Diagnostics, Biotechnology and Clinical Research: Challenges and Opportunities)

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Review

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35 pages, 1245 KiB

Open AccessReview

How to Assess the Measurement Performance of Mobile/Wearable Point-of-Care Testing Devices? A Systematic Review Addressing Sweat Analysis

by Sarah Tonello, Giulia Abate, Michela Borghetti, Nicola Francesco Lopomo, Mauro Serpelloni and Emilio Sardini

Electronics 2022, 11(5), 761; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11050761 - 1 Mar 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2693

Abstract

Recent advances in technologies for biosensor integration in mobile or wearable devices have highlighted the need for the definition of proper validation procedures and technical standards that enable testing, verification and validation of the overall performance of these solutions. Thus, reliable assessment—in terms of limits of detection/quantitation, linearity, range, analytical and diagnostic sensitivity/specificity, accuracy, repeatability, reproducibility, cross-reactivity, diagnostic efficiency, and positive/negative prediction—still represents the most critical and challenging aspect required to progress beyond the status of feasibility studies. Considering this picture, this work aims to review and discuss the literature referring to the available methods and criteria reported in the assessment of the performance of point-of-care testing (PoCT) devices within their specific applications. In particular, without losing generality, we focused on mobile or wearable systems able to analyze human sweat. In performing this review, the focus was on the main challenges and trends underlined in the literature, in order to provide specific hints that can be used to set shared procedures and improve the overall reliability of the identified solutions, addressing the importance of sample management, the sensing components, and the electronics. This review can contribute to supporting an effective validation of mobile or wearable PoCT devices and thus to spreading the use of reliable approaches outside hospitals and clinical laboratories. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioelectronics and Biosensors in Diagnostics, Biotechnology and Clinical Research: Challenges and Opportunities)

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