Biochemical Sensors / Biochemische Sensoren

The world-wide needs for chemical detection and analysis rise steadily. Several reasons lead to this trend, for instance the rapid increase in the prevalence of diabetes, the increasing need for environmental and health monitoring, new legislative standards for food and drugs quality control or even the early detection of biological and chemical terror attacks. Thanks to higher sensitivity and specificity, short response times and reduction of overall costs, biosensors can be very competitive in addressing these needs when compared to traditional methods. This module imparts a general overview of biosensors with different points of focus, such as the basics of chemistry and molecular biology, biological detection methods, physical transduction methods, and immobilization techniques as well as biochip technologies.  

Excerpt of the courseware

Solid-State Sensors / Festkörpersensoren

The advances in microelectronics and micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have revolutionized the scenario of sensor technology. Thanks to new materials and processes, traditional bulky, slow and expensive sensor systems could be replaced by miniaturized and integrated smart sensors based on semiconductors. With the help of solid-state sensors, various application areas have been developed. In everyday life, we encounter them, for example in the form of navigation and control systems in vehicles or as microphones, accelerometers, compass and cameras in mobile phones and tablets. In addition to the automotive industry and the mobile communications, solid-state sensors find applications in many other areas, for example in health care to record the blood pressure or body temperature in real time. This module imparts a general overview of solid-state sensors with different points of focus, such as sensor system design, operational amplifiers, and solid-state physics. In addition, various semiconductor-based detection methods for radiation (ionizing and non-ionizing), magnetic fields, mechanical forces, and temperature. In addition, the students are intensively dealing with the fundamentals of MEMS.