Bioluminescent bioreporter integrated circuits (BBICs)

As the workhorse of the integrated circuit (IC) industry, the capabilities of CMOS have been expanded well beyond the original applications. The full spectrum of analog circuits from switched-capacitor filters to microwave circuit blocks, and from general-purpose operational amplifiers to sub- nanosecond analog timing circuits for nuclear physics experiments have been implemented in CMOS. This technology has also made in-roads into the growing area of monolithic sensors with devices such as active-pixel sensors and other electro-optical detection devices. While many of the processes used for MEMS fabrication are not compatible with the CMOS IC process, depositing a sensor material onto a previously fabricated CMOS circuit can create a very useful category of sensors. In this work we report a chemical sensor composed of bioluminescent bioreporters (genetically engineered bacteria) deposited onto a micro-luminometer fabricated in a standard CMOS IC process. The bioreporter used for this work emitted 490-nm light when exposed to toluene. This luminescence was detected by the micro- luminometer giving an indication of the concentration of toluene. Other bioluminescent bioreporters sensitive to explosives, mercury, and other organic chemicals and heavy metals have been reported. These could be incorporated (individually or in combination) with the micro-luminometer reported here to form a variety of chemical sensors.