The microfluidic cheque card contains the smart biosensor grain, which is powered through induction and will communicate to the analysis device using a wireless protocol. This requires heterogeneous integration of a magnetic TMR-CMOS Biosensor to a power management and communication chip in one small monolithic package. Since the combined chip is induction powered, no wire connections are necessary between “disposable” and “analyser”. This significantly simplifies the assembly process of the microfluidic card and improves reliability. By means of the heterogeneous integration a much smaller outer dimension combined with a wireless communication can be achieved.
Schematic illustration of the combined sensor and communication modules (by G. Holweg, Infineon Austria)
Smart Sensor Grains with arrays of magnetoresistive sensors permit form factor reduction through heterogenous integration of several functionalities, wireless data transfer to the central device and provide a broad potential for numerous applications in nucleic acid and protein diagnostics. The application of a RF module and transponder will facilitate the transfer of the analysis data to a reader device.
TMR-CMOS Bio-Sensor (in cooperation with W. Raberg, Infineon AG)
[more] e-BRAINS website
