Biosensors and beyond

ASG uses a process called MACE (Metal Assisted Chemical Etching) to produce silicon nanowire structures on the surface of silicon wafers.

ASG’s patented biosensor works by combining known approaches to sensitizing silicon to organic biological molecules with photoelectric principles to create a highly sensitive quantitative measurement technique for specific analytes in solution. The device design allows for detection of multiple analytes in the same test: proteins, nucleic acids, and more. 

Nanowires have a high surface area to volume ratio making them sensitive to their environment. This allows the measurement of dilute concentrations - pico-gram/ml detection is possible. 

ASG’s design allows for low cost processing with the potential to reduce the cost of testing for proteins and other biological molecules in solution in many areas of medicine and the life 

sciences.

Nanowires have been studied for use in the detection and measurement of proteins and other biological molecules, but the approach has not been widely applied. This is primarily because the designs used very expensive complex fabrication techniques and have only a few nanowires (1-5) per device limiting their utility.

ELISA testing is the current standard for many measurements of analytes in solution in the life sciences. ASG’s biosensor offers many advantages over ELISA testing as shown in the table below.

ASG’s biosensor is easy to use – simply drop the solution to be tested on the biosensor’s nanowire surface and measure the current with/without light.

Application areas include biomanufacturing, point-of-care diagnostics, early detection for lung cancer and more.