Development of a Piezoelectric Flexural Plate-Wave (FPW) Biomems-Sensor for Rapid Point-of-Care Diagnostics

A high rate of post-neonatal deaths is due to a Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). An early diagnosis with the accurate patient stratification and forecast of disease outcome is vital for an effective treatment. Common diagnostics for the identification of unknown pathogens require large sample volumes and are laborious. In this work, a novel piezoelectric FPW Bio-MEMS sensor based on the frequency shift of a resonating membrane due to binding of an additional mass was developed. The experimental results show that the sensor, a critical part of point-of-care devices, can detect with a high degree of accuracy RSV chemokines in complex media and is much faster than standard methods.