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Adv-Healthcare-Materials_Coverpage_Credits at Daniil Karnaushenko, IFW Dresden

Abstract:
The world-wide deployment of biomedical devices for health monitoring, point-of-care diagnostics and environmental sensing is hampered by their high cost that is not readily affordable for e.g. developing countries. The primary task is therefore to reduce the price of the devices and allow for their high-volume delivery in a cost efficient manner, e.g. container transportation. For the latter, a crucial aspect is to reduce the weight of the device.

Flexible Future of Point-of-Care Disease Diagnostic

Dresden, Germany | Posted on July 29th, 2015

Within the Silicon Nanowire Research Path (SiNW) of TU Dresden’s Cluster of Excellence ‘Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden’ (cfaed), the scientists realized a light weight and mechanically flexible diagnostic platform based on cost-effective highly sensitive Si nanowire field effect transistors fabricated on flexible polymeric foils, which are only 100 µm thick. The devices reveal a remarkable limit of detection for subtype H1N1 Avian Influenza Virus, which is considered as a global major risk for human health, exemplified by the declaration as pandemic to the 2009 swine-origin one. The devices on polymeric support are about 10 times lighter compared to their rigid counterparts realized on conventional Si wafers which make them cost efficient for high-volume delivery to medical institutions worldwide. The researchers envision that the realization of the sensitive diagnostic platform will allow the timely diagnosis of the viral or infectious diseases also in the developing countries.

This work was carried out at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (IFW) in cooperation with the Chair of Materials Science and Nanotechnology of TU Dresden and NaMLab gGmbH.

The original work was published as a cover story of the recent issue of Advanced Healthcare Materials 10, 1517 (2015)

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About Technische Universitaet Dresden
The Technical University of Dresden is one of the top universities in Germany and Europe: strong in research and considered first-rate with respect to the range and the quality of the study programmes it offers, it is also closely interconnected with culture, business and society. As a modern comprehensive, multi-discipline university and with its 14 faculties it has a broad and diverse scientific spectrum that only few other universities in Germany are able to match. It is Saxony’s largest university. The large campus family of the TU Dresden is comprised of 37,000 students and approximately 7,900 employees, about 4,400 of whom are budget-funded – among them 524 professors – and another roughly 3,500 who work as grant-supported employees.

With its Institutional Strategy or Zukunftskonzept in German - “The Synergetic University”, the Cluster of Excellence “cfaed – Centre for Advancing Electronics Dresden” and the two follow-up proposals, “Centre for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD)” and “Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering (DIGS-BB)”, the TU Dresden on 15 June 2012 achieved the title of University of Excellence in the first phase of the Excellence Initiative launched by the German federal and state governments. This means that it is one of Germany’s eleven universities of excellence.

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Contacts:
Kim-Astrid Magister
+49 (0) 351 463-32398

Dr. Denys Makarov
IFW Dresden
Helmholtzstraße 20
01069 Dresden
Germany
Phone: +49-351-4659-648

Prof. Gianaurelio Cuniberti
Institute for Materials Science
TU Dresden
01062 Dresden
Germany
Phone: +49-351-463-31421

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Mikolajick
NaMLab gGmbH
Nöthnitzer Str. 64
01187 Dresden
Germany
Phone: +49-351-2124-99020