An accurate, high-speed, portable bifunctional electrical detector for COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, has rapidly spread and caused a severe global pandemic. Because no specific drugs are available for COVID-19 and few vaccines are available for SARS-CoV-2, accurate and rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 has been the most crucial measure to control this pandemic. Here, we developed a portable bifunctional electrical detector based on graphene field-effect transistors for SARS-CoV-2 through either nucleic acid hybridization or antigen-antibody protein interaction, with ultra-low limits of detection of ~ 0.1 and ~ 1 fg mL−1 in phosphate buffer saline, respectively. We validated our method by assessment of RNA extracts from the oropharyngeal swabs of ten COVID-19 patients and eight healthy subjects, and the IgM/IgG antibodies from serum specimens of six COVID-19 patients and three healthy subjects. Here we show that the diagnostic results are in excellent agreement with the findings of polymerase chain reaction-based optical methods; they also exhibit rapid detection speed ( ~ 10 min for nucleic acid detection and ~ 5 min for immunoassay). Therefore, our assay provides an efficient, accurate tool for high-throughput point-of-care testing.