Deblina Sarkar

Deblina Sarkar is an Indian electrical engineer, and inventor, born in Kolkata, West Bengal. She is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the AT&T Career Development Chair Professor of the MIT Media Lab. Sarkar has been internationally recognized for her invention of an ultra thin quantum mechanical transistor that can be scaled to nano-sizes and used in nanoelectronic biosensors. As the principal investigator of the Nano Cybernetic Biotrek Lab at MIT, Sarkar leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers towards bridging the gap between nanotechnology and synthetic biology to build new nano-devices and life-machine interfacing technologies with which to probe and enhance biological function.

Early life and academic career Sarkar was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India and pursued her undergraduate education in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, India. During her undergraduate degree, she focused her research on nanoscale device design and spintronics, receiving international recognition for her work. The paper she published in 2007 explored the efficacy of double-gate MOSFETs. Before completing her degree, she spent a summer as an intern in Laurens Molenkamp's laboratory at the Wurzburg University, Germany, conducting research in spintronics. After completing her Ph.D. work in 2015, Sarkar began her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT in the Synthetic Neurobiology group. Under the mentorship of Edward Boyden, Sarkar developed novel technologies to map brain structure and function.

In 2020, Sarkar joined the faculty at MIT as an Assistant Professor and became the AT&T Career Development Chair Professor at MIT Media Labs. She became the principal investigator of a group of researchers which she has called the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek Lab. This device overcomes the fundamental thermal limitations in power of conventional transistors and achieves subthermionic subthreshold swing due to quantum mechanical tunneling based carrier transport. Efficient tunneling is achieved because of its unique heterostructure design consisting of doped germanium source, atomically thin MoS2 channel, and large tunnelling area.

Ultra-sensitive electrical biosensors Sarkar developed a novel Field-effect transistor based biosensor using MoS2 which provides high sensitivity, 74-fold higher than graphene, but also ease of patternability and device fabrication as it has a 2D atomically layered structure. Her development is compatible in biological tissues and provides a novel pathway to detect single molecules, highlighting the power of MoS2 materials in the next-generation of biosensors. This can open up new avenues for wearable/implantable medical devices as well as point-of-care applications.

High-frequency model of graphene Sarkar and team developed a detailed methodology for the accurate evaluation of DC to high-frequency impedance of 2D layered structures. This model provides insights into the physics of on-chip 2D interconnects and inductors and revealed for the first-time anomalous skin effect in graphene. Going beyond the simplifying assumptions of Ohm's law, this model takes into account the effects of electric-field variation within mean free path and current dependency on the nonlocal electric-field, to accurately capture the high-frequency behavior of graphene. It showed for the first time that the high-frequency resistance of intercalation doped multi-layer graphene interconnects is lower than that of copper and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Moreover, as high as 32 and 50% improvements in quality-factor compared to copper and CNTs respectively, can be achieved with graphene-based inductors. This model is critical for building high frequency/RF devices in emerging technologies including "all 2D" integrated circuits, which can lead to flexible/conformable computers and prosthetic devices.

Nanoscale mapping of the brain Sarkar and team, developed a novel tool called iterated direct expansion microscopy , which enables researchers optical access to nanoscale structures by expanding tissues. Cellular structures, such as synapses between neurons, are densely packed with molecules impeding access of antibodies and other labelling tools. Further, target molecules might be beyond the limits of diffraction such that light microscopes are unable to capture the fine detail and resolution of biological units. Early Career Distinguished Presenter at Materials Research Society (2023) 2D materials for FET based biosensors. D. Sarkar. Fundamentals and Sensing applications of 2D materials, Ed: C.S. Rout, D.J. Late and Hywel Morgan, Woodhead Publishing Series, Elsevier, 2019 Glyoxal as an alternative to PFA in immunostaining and nanoscopy. K. N. Richter, N. H. Revelo, K. J. Seitz, M. S. Helm, D. Sarkar et al.. The EMBO Journal, 2017. Multiplexed neural recording along a single optical fiber via optical reflectometry. S. G. Rodriques, A. H. Marblestone, J. Scholvin, J. Dapello, D. Sarkar, M. Mankin, R. Gao, L. Wood and E. S. Boyden. Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 057003, 2016. A Subthermionic Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor with an Atomically Thin Channel. Deblina Sarkar, Xuejun Xie, Wei Liu, Wei Cao, Jiahao Kang, Yongji Gong, Stephan Kraemer, Pulickel M. Ajayan and Kaustav Banerjee. Nature (journal), Vol. 526, pp. 91–95, 2015 Functionalization of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides with Metallic Nanoparticles: Implications for Doping and Gas-Sensing. Deblina Sarkar, Xuejun Xie, Jiahao Kang, Haojun Zhang, Wei Liu, Jose Navarrete, Martin Moskovits and Kaustav Banerjee. Nano Letters, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 2852–2862, 2015. MoS2 Field-Effect Transistor for Next-Generation Label-Free Biosensors. Deblina Sarkar, Wei Liu, Xuejun Xie, Aaron Anselmo, Samir Mitragotri and Kaustav Banerjee. ACS Nano, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 3992–4003, 2014. Impact-Ionization Field-Effect-Transistor Based Biosensors for Ultra-Sensitive Detection of Biomolecules. Deblina Sarkar, Harald Gossner, Walter Hansch and Kaustav Banerjee. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 102, No. 20, 203110, 2013. Proposal for Tunnel-Field-Effect-Transistor as Ultra-Sensitive and Label-Free Biosensors. Deblina Sarkar and Kaustav Banerjee. Applied Physics Letters, 100, No. 14, 143108, 2012. Metallic-Nanoparticle Assisted Enhanced Band-to-Band Tunneling Current. Deblina Sarkar and Kaustav Banerjee. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 99, No. 13, pp. 133116, Sept 26, 2011. High-Frequency Behavior of Graphene-Based Interconnects—Part I: Impedance Modeling. Deblina Sarkar, Chuan Xu, Hong Li, and Kaustav Banerjee. IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp. 843–852, March 2011. A Novel Enhanced Electric-Field Impact-Ionization MOS Transistor. Deblina Sarkar, Navab Singh and Kaustav Banerjee. IEEE Electron Device Letters, Vol. 31, No. 11, pp. 1175–1177, Nov. 2010.