| Case Study: Silicon Biosensor |
| Business Challenge: |
| A collaborator required a semiconductor device with a bioactive silicon surface containing immobilized
DNA capture probes. They also needed to demonstrate its manufacturability in reasonable yield to meet investors' expectations. |
| BEST-Bio Solution: |
| Though it was relatively easy to covalently attach the DNA probes to the oxidized silicon
surface, the amorphous nature of the silicon resulted in a variable number of Si-O-Si and Si-OH groups. This intrinsic variability in the silicon
surface resulted in a poor reproducibility when the DNA probe was attached to the surface, both within and between batches of devices. |
| BEST-Bio recognized that were two issues: |
| | Firstly the customer had a shorter term investor-driven manufacturing milestone | | Secondly the customer was generating an irreproducible surface | BEST-Bio provided the client with a dual track solution. The first track was to develop a methodology to
make a reproducible surface within the investors' timeline expectations. The parallel second track involved development of a process scalable to higher
volume manufacturing runs, to be completed in the medium term. | | With BEST-Bio's solution, the collaborator was successful in meeting their short term and medium term milestones. | | |
