Quartz On-chip for Virus Detection

Introduction

The global-scale pandemic crisis of COVID-19 requires precise and immediate technological solutions for virological and serological diagnosis tests. These tests must be accurate, rapid, intelligent, and cost-efficient to prevent future rebounds of infections and help control the pandemic.

MEMS Technology

In this context, the Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) industry, especially piezoelectric resonators of all shapes and sizes, is a promising strategy to revolutionize the biological detection market. Ultrahigh sensitive nanomechanical resonators showed the potential of this technology for mass loading.

Challenges in Biomedical Application

Unfortunately, applying MEMS to the biomedical sector requires challenging qualities, making it often unattainable to material scientists and engineers.

QOVID's Solution

QOVID offers a solution to fill this gap between MEMS and biomedicine by developing a commercialization solution for piezoelectric-quartz resonating devices to detect the mass response of SARS-CoV-2 spike molecular interactions as an original readout of viral loads.

Technology Foundation

QOVID builds on the technology developed during the ERC Starting Grant SENSiSOFT to provide a user-friendly versatile Bio-MEMS sensor prototype. This prototype will give researchers in the life sciences and biomedical sector, without engineering or electronic training, a reliable diagnostic tool to detect SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses.

Scaling Up Production

QOVID will scale up a new generation of on-chip epitaxial piezoelectric-quartz/Si MEMS manufactured exclusively by soft-chemistry with CMOS-compatible processes. This will offer cost-efficient single-chip solutions not only for biomedical applications but also for many other fields.

BioMEMS Specifications

These quartz bioMEMS will have thicknesses between 200 nm and 1 µm, which is between 10 to 50 times thinner and 10 to 100 times more sensitive than those obtained by traditional top-down technologies on bulk crystals.

Commercialization Strategy

QOVID will pursue commercialization and market solutions both within academia and the biotechnology and biomedical sectors, among other sectors.