Pulsed biosensing

As swift heavy ion tracks in insulators exhibit a multitude of interesting electronic properties, they are promising base structures for future non-semiconductor-based electronic concepts. Especially when embedding high fluency ion irradiated thin polymer foils into electrolytes, the tracks show some similarity to neural systems insofar as they emit electrical current preferentially in the form of current spikes upon application of a low-frequency alternating voltage. The interaction of many such spike emitters may lead to phase-locked spike synchronization, so that pulsed currents as large as ∼ 0.1 μA or so emerge. If in contact with biomatter, the current pulses are determined by their ambient. This novel biosensing concept is demonstrated for glucose detection.