Silicon nanowire field-effect transistors for biosensing: Progress, challenges, and perspectives

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Over the past two decades, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) have shown great potential in biomedical sensing based on field-effect principle, known as silicon nanowires field effect transistors (SiNW-FETs). Owing to their excellent inherent properties-such as high signal sensitivity and a large surface-to-volume ratio-SiNW-FETs have been widely studied and applied in the label-free detection of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), proteins, viruses, nucleotide sequences, cellular signaling, and disease diagnosis, offering advantages including high sensitivity, target selectivity and real-time detection. In this review, we focus on the origin and development of SiNW-FET over the past decade, covering their working principle, fabrication process, performance improvement of SiNW-FET Biosensor, and applications in detection of DNA, various virus, cellular investigation, and clinical disease diagnosis. Current challenges and potential solutions are also discussed.