Colloquium
Department of Physics, NCU
Nanostructure-enabled platforms for molecular analysis and bacteria study
Speaker
Prof. Chia-Fu Chou (周家復)
Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica
Date 2017.04.18(Tue)
Time 14:00
Place S4-625
In recent years, we have developed a few nanostructure-enabled platforms for the manipulation and analysis of biomolecules and bacteria: (1) sub-30 nm insulating nanoconstriction operating under the balance of negative dielectrophoresis (DEP), electrophoresis, and electroosmosis, serves as molecular dam, enables protein enrichment of 105-fold in 20 seconds [1], which can then be coupled with graphene-modified electrodes for sensitive electrochemical detection of peptides, cancer biomarkers, and cortisol [2-4]; (2) an array of electrode nanogaps with sub-10 nm gap size function as templates for AC DEP-based molecular trapping, plasmonic hot spots for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy as well as electronic measurements, and fluorescence imaging, demonstrated with protein R-phycoerythrin [5] and Alzheimer’s disease candidate biomarkers A-beta 40 and 42 peptides; (3) a sub-nanoliter fluidic nanochannels is developed on germanium for attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) Spectroscopy [6]; and (4) periodic structures of micro-nanofluidic junctions may be used to study physical stress-induced morphological plasticity of bacteria [7]. Our platforms open up simple ways for molecular and cellular biophysics study.