Fluidic operation of a polymer-based nanosensor chip for analysing single molecules

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Nanotechnology
• Diagnostics

Background:

• Traditional medical diagnostic tests are often costly, time-consuming, and require specialized facilities.
• There is a need for accessible, rapid diagnostic tools to enable precision medicine at the point of care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and characterize a mixed-scale nanosensor chip for point-of-care nucleic acid detection.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of using nanofluidic channels for product identification and detection.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of a nanosensor chip using silicon masters, focused ion beam milling, photolithography, deep reactive ion etching, and thermal nanoimprint lithography.
• Utilized COMSOL simulations to optimize device design, investigating pillar array loading and fluid dynamics (hydrodynamic and electrokinetic flows).
• Experimental verification of fluid flow using fluorescent tracers (Rhodamine B) and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA).

Main Results:

• Successfully fabricated a mixed-scale nanosensor chip suitable for in vitro diagnostics.
• COMSOL simulations provided insights into device operation and guided design parameters.
• Experimental results validated the simulated hydrodynamic and electrokinetic flow characteristics.

Conclusions:

• The developed nanosensor chip is a promising platform for point-of-care precision medicine.
• The fabrication process and design principles are suitable for creating advanced diagnostic devices.
• This technology has the potential to significantly improve the accessibility and efficiency of medical diagnostics.