Patent DE 10 2018 218 122

Application-specific integrated circuits with sensor technology for near-patient laboratory diagnostics, also known as point-of-care testing (PoCT), and so-called in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) are the focus of research and development at IMMS. The invention contributes to the improvement of medical diagnostics in PoCT and IVD applications, as a large part of the technical complexity is integrated into the microelectronic sensor system.

The idea of the invention includes the device and a method described below, in particular for the optical analysis of biological, chemical and biochemical substances and binding reactions using microelectronic sensor ASICs, which can be used for the rapid, precise and reliable detection of clinically relevant analytes.

The device comprises a microelectronic sensor system with

• semiconductor sensor (4)
• application-specific integrated circuit for signal processing of the sensor signal
• technical interface for the application of biological, chemical or biochemical substances
• adjusting device for adjusting the dynamic range and the signal resolution of the sensor signal with an integrator circuit (10.1) which comprises an adjustable electrical capacitance (CINT) to which the electrical signal generated by means of the at least one semiconductor sensor (4) can be applied,
• comparator circuit (10.2), which detects the increase in the electrical integration voltage (VINT) resulting from the charging of the adjustable electrical capacitance (CINT) of the integrator circuit (10.1) and compares the value of the resulting electrical integration voltage (VINT) with two different signal thresholds (VKS1, VKS2)
• Counter circuit (10.4) which, when a first signal threshold (VKS1) of the resulting electrical integration voltage (VINT) is reached, starts a time counting process as a function of the clock pulse fed into the microelectronic sensor system at a defined frequency and stops the time counting process when a higher second signal threshold (VKS2) is reached

The method utilises the device described, in which a biological, chemical or biochemical substance is applied to the technical interface, for which substance information formed as a function of the substance is detected by means of the semiconductor sensor and an electrical signal corresponding to the substance information is generated.

Due to the adjustment of the dynamic range and signal resolution, the device enables a variety of physically different analysis methods to be carried out, whereby the number of necessary preparation steps and thus the duration of the entire analysis process, the material consumption for sample preparation and the number of technical, for example optical, components can be significantly reduced.