Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated a graphene-based mutli-modal bio-sensor that can transmit transducing protein binding events into optical, electrical, and mechanical signals.
Such a multi-modal sensor means that you can inspect a single sample and obtain information from the three properties (optical, electrical and mechanical). This could lead to a sensor that outperforms single-mode sensors even if each signal detection by itself is not the best one. The researchers say that their sensor achieves a 100-times improvement in the sensing dynamic range over current single-mode sensors.
To create this multi-modal sensor, the researchers take a graphene FET based sensor, couple it with a nanoantenna-based optical sensor and place it on a nanomechanical resonator based sensor. The researcher