Fabrication and characterization of DIACELL diamond-based detectors for in vitro cellular radiobiology

During the last years, the authors developed innovative diamond-based biosensors for applications in cellular neuroscience. The application of these devices, with embedded graphitic micro-channels, has helped to achieve substantial results in this scientific field. Indeed, for the first time, a correlation between X-rays exposure and the increase of the neurosecretion activity of in vitro cellular samples was demonstrated. Electrons generated by ionizing radiation in target biological samples release their energy, and thus damage the chemical structure of the target sample. In radiation biology, the main effects are given by the interaction with DNA. As a consequence, a series of pathways and systems in the cell are activated to efficiently repair the DNA-base damages, even though the excessive damage could eventually lead to the programmed cellular death (apoptosis). For this reason, measurements of the dose delivered to the irradiated cellular samples are crucial to acquire information about the produced damages. In this framework, the DIACELL project was proposed with the target of developing a device devoted to perform radiobiological experiments, measuring the signals released from the cellular samples during the irradiation, while, simultaneously, detecting the ionizing radiation impinging on the biological samples, in order to quantify the dose delivered to the cells. These devices have been realised using artificial diamond samples since this material presents outstanding properties for biosensing and dosimetric applications. In this paper, we report the fabrication process and the characterization of the latest generation of devices.