SBIR Phase II: Improving silicon nanowire biosensors: throughput, repeatability, and quantifying measurement advantages

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to further develop improved biosensing for biomanufacturing. Improved biosensing will enable biomanufacturers to better measure the purity of their products and thus develop processes that result in more pure products. Specifically, this phase II project is to develop a silicon nanowire biosensor from proof of concept to a working platform suitable for initial testing and deployment for the detection of host cell proteins in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. An improved biosensor developed in this project promises to improve yields, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes through higher purity and safer biopharmaceuticals. The proposed project will validate the sensor's use, function, and measurement accuracy in comparison to current methods for detection and measurement. The innovation is a low-cost, quantitative biosensor that can detect many different proteins on the same chip and do so even when the proteins are present at a low concentration level. The company will use vertically aligned silicon nanowire arrays, an inexpensive process to make nanowires, and a device design that eliminates the difficulties in electrically contacting nanowire arrays. The company will fully characterize the sensor's response and compare this response to the metrics that are currently used in the industry. In order to achieve this goal, they will increase the process throughput required to make these sensors, set manufacturing controls to achieve an acceptable consistency in the sensors, measure the response of these sensors over a wide range of protein concentration values, and build a validation package to assist customers in their implementation for using these sensors. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.