Micro and Nanopatterning for Bacteria- and Virus-Based Biosensing Applications

Current technologies capable of rapidly and accurately detecting the presence of infectious diseases and toxic compounds in the human body and the environment are inadequate and new, novel techniques are required to ensure the safety of the general population. To develop these technologies, researchers must broaden their scope of interest and investigate scientific areas that have yet to be fully explored. Lithography is a common name given to technologies designed to print materials onto smooth surfaces. More specifically, micropatterning encompasses the selective binding of materials to surfaces in organized microscale arrays. The selective micropatterning of bacteria and viruses is currently an exciting area of research in the field of biomedical engineering and can potentially offer attractive qualities to biosensing applications in terms of increased sensing accuracy and reliability. This chapter focuses on briefly introducing the reader to the fundamentals of bacterial and viral surface interactions and describing several different micropatterning techniques and their advantages and disadvantages in the field of biosensing. The application of these techniques in healthcare and environmental settings is also discussed.