SELECTIVE ACOUSTIC PLATE MODE DNA SENSOR

Acoustic wave sensors have been proposed for (bio)sensing applications for the past 20 years. One of the most attractive acoustic wave senso r geometries for these applications is the acoustic plate mode (APM) d elay line. However, the use of APM delay lines has been hampered by th e relative immaturity of the associated design techniques. The princip le issue in the design of APM delay fines is to excite and detect elec trically a single acoustic mode within the plate with low distortion f rom intermode interference or multiple waveguide reflections. The use of single-phase unidirectional transducers (SPUDT) enables the excitat ion and detection of a single acoustic mode, reducing the distortions that occur in conventional transducer designs. The current work examin es the sensing properties of the resulting APM device for the selectiv e detection of chemically denatured, double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (ds-DNA) obtained through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplifi cation of genomic viral DNA from cytomegalovirus (CMV).