Electrical detection of nucleic acid amplification using an on-chip quasi-reference electrode and a PVC REFET

Electrical detection of nucleic acid amplification through pH changes associated with nucleotide addition enables miniaturization, greater portability of testing apparatus, and reduced costs. However, current ion-sensitive field effect transistor methods for sensing nucleic acid amplification rely on establishing the fluid gate potential with a bulky, difficult to microfabricate reference electrode that limits the potential for massively parallel reaction detection. Here we demonstrate a novel method of utilizing a microfabricated solid-state quasi-reference electrode (QRE) paired with a pH-insensitive reference field effect transistor (REFET) for detection of real-time pH changes. The end result is a 0.18 μm, silicon-on-insulator, foundry-fabricated sensor that utilizes a platinum QRE to establish a pH-sensitive fluid gate potential and a PVC membrane REFET to enable pH detection of loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). This technique is highly amendable to commercial scale-up, reduces the packaging and fabrication requirements for ISFET pH detection, and enables massively parallel droplet interrogation for applications, such as monitoring reaction progression in digital PCR.