Australian semiconductor company Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) is one step closer to the commercialisation of their deep tech biochip that could soon be used to detect some of the world’s most deadly transmittable diseases thanks to a major tech milestone.

The milestone has been achieved in an early-stage prototype where Archer successfully implemented an integrated biochip platform with a robotic handler that can seamlessly handle a sample into the biochip fluidics and graphene sensor, which can then display the readings on a connected computer. This progress is critical to Archer’s biochip given the nature of its capacity which has the potential to detect deadly diseases without the risk of contamination or transmission in lab settings.

“This is a significant step in the development of Archer’s biochip that has the potential for commercial applications,” said Archer CEO, Dr Mohammad Choucair.

“Archer will focus on building advanced and sophisticated versions of this system which could be used in commercial or applied research settings.

“The system will allow the Archer team to accurately, reliably, reproducibly, and quickly obtain data related to the Company’s biochip devices, which is importantly, required to establish commercial partnerships with global companies organising around the high-growth biosensing and diagnostics market.”

The system hardware and software employed paves the way for future designs which embed single-chip multiplexing, a much sought-after solution in medical diagnostics.

Enabling Archer to develop such a biochip is their industry-leading research and development of graphene devices. With nanoscale electronic, chemical, and physical properties, graphene is widely regarded as the next generation of biosensing applications, for which Archer’s biochip represents a paradigm shift within the global biotech industry.

The Archer biochip integrates liquid-gated graphene field effect transistors (gFETs) that are compatible with liquids, even using the liquid as part of the transistor, in what the company describes as, a ‘lab-on-a-chip’ that would be able to detect multiple biological targets.

The platform developed by Archer operates an end-to-end process that has been custom built by the Company. Having achieved this milestone, Archer will be able to advance the platform now that this critical handling process has been automated with robotics to improve the quality of readings generated by the sensing devices.

By using graphene, the ultrasensitive nature of gFETs is expected to offer greater analytical and detection capabilities than traditional electronic sensors for biological samples used in medical diagnostics.

The development of Archer’s graphene biochips complements their development of quantum computing processors, stemming from their 100% owned IP related to the biochip technology.

The graphene biochip utilised in this prototype milestone currently has patent applications pending in Australia and the US. Archer is well positioned to advance the prototype towards commercialisation courtesy of a strong cash balance of more than $25 million on hand with no debt.