Wearable Piezoelectric BioMEMS-based Sensor for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Virus Droplets Detection

Viral diagnostic is essential to the fields of medicine and bio-nanotechnology, but such analyses can present some complex analytical challenges. While molecular methods that are mostly used in clinical laboratories, for instance, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and antigens tests require long acquisition times, and often provides unreliable results for COVID-19 virus detection, the piezo-based sensors coupled with MEMS have demonstrated a significant role in robust viral detection. In this work, we have designed and simulated a piezoelectric MEMS-based biosensor integrated into a wearable face mask for early detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus droplets. We systematically investigated the influence of virus droplets in changing the applied stress on the cantilever receptor pit with change in mass when viruses (pathogens) from airborne coughing droplets-nuclei binds with coated antibodies on the sensor's cantilever layer with receptor pit thereby generating electric potential. Additionally, Bio-MEMS sensor results have manifested that it has the ability to detect a single size particle of 1 virion with a diameter ≥100 nm and mass of 1fg in a single cough containing droplet nuclei of radius 0.05μm in a less amount of time. Additionally, we empirically set electrical potential as thresholds parameter for our wearable biosensor embedded in the face mask for public monitoring to detect contagious virus particle droplets. Furthermore, this study presented the prospective use of MEMS-based sensing method to identify and detect other biological (bacteria and toxins) analytes.