Functional Nano-Structured Surfaces for Protein Based Sensors

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The reduction of the typical length scale in the creation of patterned surfaces is of high interest in the field of biosensor and bio-interacting materials. During the last few years several researchers explored the influence of the nano-structured materials on the protein adsorption or on the cell adhesion assays. The technological difficulty relies in the creation of the nano-structures with controlled physico-chemical and geometrical properties, by exploiting the current nano-fabrication techniques which are potentially compatible with industrial scaling. The excellent results obtained by using a bottom-up approach (molecular assembly, auto-nano-fabrication) are now far to be scaled to high-throughput systems. On the other hand top-down approach is often too expensive and time consuming (e.g. electron beam lithography) otherwise is giving very promising results. In our approach we combined well-known techniques of material processing requiring low-cost and fast fabrication steps, such as plasma deposition and plasma etching techniques of polymeric materials. Several type of nanostructures (ranging from 70 to 250 nm) such as nano-pillars, nano-domes and nano-wells consisting of materials with chemical and/or biological functionalities suitable for biosensor applications are produced in our laboratory. In this work examples of this research activity will be illustrated. In particular the fabrication process and characterization of Poly Acrylic Acid nano-domes and nano-pillars, gold nano-wells will be described and discussed.

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Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Technical Proceedings of the 2005 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 2
Published: May 8, 2005
Pages: 325 - 327
Industry sector: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing
Topics: Advanced Materials for Engineering Applications, Coatings, Surfaces & Membranes
ISBN: 0-9767985-1-4