A Powerful, Novel Electrochemical Transistor: The Three-Dimensional Carbon Redox Amplifier

Abstract: Just like a solid-state transistor amplifies a small electronic current, a redox amplifier amplifies an ionic current for the more sensitive detection of species in a liquid (e.g., glucose, lactate, urea, creatinine). The team at Tec de Monterrey is working on a novel redox amplifier that can amplify an ionic current more than a hundred times, allowing for sensors of those types of analytes to become 100 times more sensitive than sensors in the current market. This result is principally achieved by making three-dimensional “transistors” instead of two-dimensional ones and switching from gold as a building material to carbon. 

Bio: Before joining Tec de Monterrey, Madou was a Distinguished Professor at UC Irvine in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), and was VP of Advanced Technology at Nanogen, in San Diego. Madou is also the founder of SRI International’s Microsensor Department, founder and president of Teknekron Sensor Development Corporation (TSDC), visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley and endowed chair at Ohio State University, professor in chemistry and materials science and engineering. He specializes in the application of miniaturization technology to chemical and biological problems (BIO-MEMS).  He is the author of several books in this burgeoning field and he helped pioneer both in academia and in industry. “Fundamentals of Microfabrication,” an introduction to MEMS and NEMS, has become known as the “bible” of micromachining. He founded several micromachining companies and has been on the board of many more. Several of his students became well known in academia and through successful MEMS start-ups. 

Madou has an h-index of 94 (September 2024) and is considered the pioneer of two research fields that are now being pursued worldwide i.e., Carbon Micro- and Nanofabrication (C-MEMS and C-NEMS) and Compact Disc Fluidics (CD-Fluidics) for Molecular Diagnostics. These two technologies have resulted in several start-up companies worldwide. From those founded by Madou, Enevate, a lithium-ion battery company in Irvine, CA, is the largest and best known, https://www.enevate.com.