This paper reports the design, fabrication and testing of a microchip wherein interdigitated microelectrode arrays (IMEA)
were integrated with bipolar semiconductor photodiode array (PDA) chip to fabricate a highly compact embodiment for on-chip
handling of solutions and electrochemiluminescence (ECL) detection. A 12 × 12 micro array of photodiodes, each coupled with
an interdigitated microelectrode array (IMEA), an array of current amplifiers, and a photodiode element-addressing circuit
were integrated into a single 2 × 2 cm
2 IC chip. Each photodiode had dimensions of 300 × 300 μm
2 and the photodiode-to-photodiode distance was 100 μm. The chip was successfully applied to the on-chip quantification of
electro-chemiluminescing probe-labeled single stranded oligonucleotides. The minimum detectable limit at signal/noise ≥ 3
was found to be 5 × 10
−14 moles of oligonucleotides with a sample volume as low as 5 µl (i.e., 10 fmole/μl). The attractive features of the developed
IMEA-PDA microchip are that a plurality of samples can be analyzed simultaneously using a chip and that for a given sample
the data can be averaged from values obtained from multiple, individually addressed pixels. These in turn bring in speed and
statistical confidence in analysis. The IMEA-PDA microchip system has the potential to be used as a versatile and highly compact
chemical analysis tool for chemical sensing and metrology applications.
Keywords Interdigitated microelectrode array - Photodiode array - Bipolar semiconductor - Electrochemiluminescence