Sensor research in the service of medicine

Congratulations to the framework grant - how does it feel?
“First I couldn’t believe it. Last year, my application which was quite similar to this one got very high grades but still wasn’t good enough to be funded. And this year, I heard that the fraction of granted projects would be even lower, so then I just thought `forget about it...´ So this was a very pleasant surprise! Now we can really start working on an idea I’ve had for many years. It feels really fantastic”.

The title of your project is "The 3NANO electronic sensor for single-base detection" – what is it about?
“The idea concerns the use of silicon technology and nanoelectronics, which has shaped today’s information society. I’ve always had a strong belief that we should be able to exploit this technology not only in computers and cell phones but also in the field of bio-medicine. I like the idea of using transistors as an extremely sensitive electric sensor to detect DNA-bases, proteins, ions in electrolytes, and so on.

In my division, we investigate if our nanosized electronic devices are able to detect a single base of a DNA molecule. If we succeed, it will pave the way for DNA-sequencing as an example. Our ultimate goal is to enable a new semiconductor technology that can sequence a single DNA molecule instead of relying on many DNA copies at the same time. In this way, biologists may in the future detect a mutation and correlate it to a disease. This information could potentially lead to development of a drug for cure.

3NANO means that the sensor device is composed of three extremely important components, each at the nanoscale”.

What equipment are you using?
“We’re very grateful and privileged to have access to the excellent facilities in our clean-room laboratory in Ångström. In this lab, we’ve actually fabricated an extremely advanced sensor device that we invented two years ago. When you work on sensors you always talk about signals and noise, the signal to noise ratio being one of the most important things to consider. And this new sensor device has displayed an enhanced signal to noise ratio by three to six times, which is sensational. With the 3NANO device, we hope to be able to detect one single charge. And when that’s possible, we are close to being able to detect one single base in DNA.

“Another important piece of equipment is an electron-beam lithography tool that we got in June. It’s used to write nanoscale structures in silicon and silicon oxide, for instance, nanowires and nanopores to form part of the 3NANO sensor device in order to improve sensitivity. After such a short ramp-up time, we’re already able to write nanowires around ten nanometers in width, but our goal is to go down to five nanometers. That would allow us to make a very nice device. We’re not there yet, but we’re improving our knowledge and technical know-how”.

What does the VR-grant of 9 million kronor mean to your project?
“Today, I’m busy supporting a younger professor to build up a group working on such biosensors. We’re seven researchers right now, and this grant together with two ordinary VR grants we also have received this time will allow us to recruit five more people to work on the particular biosensors we have in mind”.

What happens now?
“First, we’ve started to refocus ourselves. We had greater ambitions in our proposal, and now with a smaller amount of money we still want to make something of high impact. We’ve adjusted our project in accordance to the smaller grant. We will work on much larger device structures than we thought to do. But we’re still committed to the ultimate goal of DNA sequencing. We will simultaneously work on raising more grants in order to put everything together and reach our ultimate goal.

May I also add that I would like to thank our Head of Department, Professor Mikael Jonsson? Since I joined this university five years ago, I’ve continuously gotten very strong support from him for which I’m very grateful - he’s a great boss!”