Microwave based biosensors with printable surface modifications for point-of-care testing of haemodialysis patients

To allow rapid and label-free biosensing, a cost-efficient and miniaturized biosensor with a simple and direct transducer scheme should be employed. Integrated-optical waveguide devices using evanescent wave sensing are an attractive concept with this respect and have been intensively studied. Another concept that has been attempted only very recently, exploits evanescent waves in the microwave regime, which offers the advantage of low-cost sender and receiver components. In particular, microwave-resonator (MR) based designs are considered as highly promising transducers for the detection of biomolecules. In the last years, high-Q MRs came in focus to design devices with unique electromagnetic properties which are not readily occurring in nature. The research group of Pendry was the first who designed a new class of artificial materials with a continuous change of the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability from positive to negative values. This class of materials is called metamaterials and can produce interesting new effects (e.g. negative refractive index, a perfect microwave cloak and sophisticated concentrators) which can be used because of their sensitivity for sensing applications. Different sensor designs based on artificial metamaterials and printable surface modifications for label-free biosensing are part of the project. ** This work is partially co-funded by the NÖ Forschungs- und Bildungsges.m.b.H. (NFB) within the Life Science Call. The authors are responsible for the contents of this publication.