Surface acoustic wave RFID sensor for chemical detection and (bio)molecular diagnostics

A surface acoustic wave (SAW) radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensor chip comprising:

• (a) a piezoelectric substrate, said substrate comprising a piezoelectric layer and a multilayer heterojunction structure made of III-V single-crystalline or polycrystalline semiconductor layers, deposited on said piezoelectric layer and comprising at least one buffer layer and at least one barrier layer, said layers being stacked alternately;
• (b) at least one pair of metal interdigitated transducers (IDT) mounted on said piezoelectric substrate, for receiving a radio frequency (RF) input signal, transducing said input signal into a surface acoustic wave (SAW), propagating said surface acoustic wave along a surface of said piezoelectric substrate and transducing said propagated surface acoustic wave into an output RF signal;
• (c) at least one normally-on or normally-off two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) or two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG) structure deposited on said piezoelectric substrate for forming a normally-on or normally-off 2DEG or 2DHG conducting channel in said multilayer heterojunction structure at the interface between said buffer layer and said barrier layer;
• (d) at least one pseudo-conducting two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) or two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG) structure deposited on said piezoelectric substrate for forming a pseudo-conducting 2DEG or 2DHG channel in said heterojunction structure at the interface between said buffer layer and said barrier layer;
• (e) at least one (bio)molecular layer immobilised on said piezoelectric substrate within the propagating SAW path and capable of binding or adsorbing target (analyte) chemical compounds or (bio)molecules from environment;
• and
• (f) electrical metallizations capacitively-coupled to said IDTs, to said normally-on or normally-off 2DEG or 2DHG structures and to said pseudo-conducting 2DEG or 2DHG structures for inducing displacement currents, thereby creating nonohmic source and drain contacts, for connecting said sensor chip to an electric circuit;
• characterised in that
• (i) said III-V single-crystalline or polycrystalline semiconductor materials are GaN/AlGaN;
• and
• (ii) said pseudo-conducting 2DEG or 2DHG structure is a semiconducting structure formed on said piezoelectric substrate by recessing or growing a top layer of said multilayer heterojunction structure to a thickness of 5-9 nm with a surface roughness of the recessed or grown top layer being 0.2 nm or less, thereby forming the pseudo-conducting 2DEG or 2DHG channel capable of conducting electric current in the current range between normally-on and normally-off operation modes of the channel.