The LAPS (light-addressable potentiometric sensor) platform is one of the most attractive approaches for chemical and biological sensing with many applications ranging from pH and ion/analyte concentration measurements up to cell metabolism detection and chemical imaging. However, although it is generally accepted that LAPS measurements are spatially resolved, the light-addressability feature of LAPS devices has not been discussed in detail so far. In this work, an extended electrical equivalent-circuit model of the LAPS has been presented, which takes into account possible cross-talk effects due to the capacitive coupling of the non-illuminated region. A shunting effect of the non-illuminated area on the measured photocurrent and addressability of LAPS devices has been studied. It has been shown, that the measured photocurrent will be determined not only by the local interfacial potential in the illuminated region but also by possible interfacial potential changes in the non-illuminated region, yielding cross-talk effects. These findings were supported by the experimental investigations of a penicillin-sensitive multi-spot LAPS and a metal-insulator-semiconductor LAPS as model systems.
Online-Messsysteme für die automatisierte Charakterisierung von feldeffektbasierten Biosensoren
(2007)
Handheld measurement device for field-effect sensor structures: Practical evaluation and limitations
(2007)
The light-addressable potentiometric sensor (LAPS) and scanning photo-induced impedance microscopy (SPIM) are two closely related methods to visualise the distributions of chemical species and impedance, respectively, at the interface between the sensing surface and the sample solution. They both have the same field-effect structure based on a semiconductor, which allows spatially resolved and label-free measurement of chemical species and impedance in the form of a photocurrent signal generated by a scanning light beam. In this article, the principles and various operation modes of LAPS and SPIM, functionalisation of the sensing surface for measuring various species, LAPS-based chemical imaging and high-resolution sensors based on silicon-on-sapphire substrates are described and discussed, focusing on their technical details and prospective applications.
Light-addressable potentiometric sensors for quantitative spatial imaging of chemical species
(2017)
A light-addressable potentiometric sensor (LAPS) is a semiconductor-based chemical sensor, in which a measurement site on the sensing surface is defined by illumination. This light addressability can be applied to visualize the spatial distribution of pH or the concentration of a specific chemical species, with potential applications in the fields of chemistry, materials science, biology, and medicine. In this review, the features of this chemical imaging sensor technology are compared with those of other technologies. Instrumentation, principles of operation, and various measurement modes of chemical imaging sensor systems are described. The review discusses and summarizes state-of-the-art technologies, especially with regard to the spatial resolution and measurement speed; for example, a high spatial resolution in a submicron range and a readout speed in the range of several tens of thousands of pixels per second have been achieved with the LAPS. The possibility of combining this technology with microfluidic devices and other potential future developments are discussed.