White paper on semiconductor technologies and system concepts to revolutionize genomics

Discover how the expertise from the semiconductor industry can revolutionize sequencing and genomics in the next decade. To enable for example proteomics, single-cell sequencing and spatial omics, much higher resolutions and new system innovations will be needed. Imec proposes the concept of cross-layer optimization to achieve this.

If you’re involved in sequencing instrumentation, supporting software or point-of-care tools, you will be interested to learn about the unprecedented capability of semiconductor technologies in terms of nanofabrication, mass production and integration, and more specifically about:

• smart precision fluidics based on a combination of plastic, glass and silicon
• single-cell sorting devices
• (arrays of) nanopore, nanochannel, nanogap and nanowell structures
• advanced transistor architectures such as FinFETs for sensing
• new nanopore-based concepts for sensing
• multi-electrode chips for spatial omics
• application-specific integrated circuits for sensor readouts
• advanced packaging techniques such as fan-out wafer-level packaging
• machine learning and artificial intelligence for more efficient base calling, genome mapping and privacy-preserving population genomics

In this white paper, you will learn about the unique capabilities of imec’s semiconductor technology platforms to improve the cost, throughput, size and reliability of your systems.

Also, we dive into a case study of a portable connected DNA sequencer that assists doctors in their decision process. It delivers results in only 4 hours and illustrates the importance of cross-layer optimization to fully unlock the power of future sequencing tools.