Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Nanotechnology. 2011 Apr 15;22(15):155301. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/22/15/155301. Epub 2011 Mar 10.
Miniaturization of the entire experimental setup is a key requirement for widespread application of nanodevices. For nanopore biosensing, integrating electrodes onto the nanopore membrane and controlling the pore length is important for reducing the complexity and improving the sensitivity of the system. Here we present a method to achieve these goals, which relies on electroless plating to produce Ag nanotubes in track-etched polymer nanopore templates. By plating from one side only, we create a conductive nanotube that does not span the full length of the pore, and thus can act as a nanoelectrode located inside the nanopore. To give optimal electrochemical behavior for sensing, we coat the Ag nanotube with a layer of AgCl. We characterize the behavior of this nanoelectrode by measuring its current-voltage response and find that, in most cases, the response is asymmetric. The plated nanopores have initial diameters between 100 and 300 nm, thus a range suitable for detection of viruses.
整个实验装置的小型化是纳米器件广泛应用的关键要求。对于纳米孔生物传感，将电极集成到纳米孔膜上并控制孔长对于降低系统的复杂性和提高灵敏度很重要。在这里，我们提出了一种实现这些目标的方法，该方法依赖于无电电镀在刻蚀聚合物纳米孔模板中的 Ag 纳米管。通过仅从一侧电镀，我们可以制造出不横跨整个孔长的导电纳米管，因此可以作为位于纳米孔内部的纳米电极。为了获得最佳的电化学传感行为，我们用一层 AgCl 涂覆 Ag 纳米管。我们通过测量其电流-电压响应来表征这种纳米电极的行为，并发现大多数情况下，响应是不对称的。电镀纳米孔的初始直径在 100 到 300nm 之间，因此适用于检测病毒。
