BioNEM, University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, 88100, Italy.
Nanoscale. 2014 Jul 21;6(14):8208-25. doi: 10.1039/c4nr00796d.
Super-hydrophobic surfaces are bio-inspired interfaces with a superficial texture that, in its most common evolution, is formed by a periodic lattice of silicon micro-pillars. Similar surfaces reveal superior properties compared to conventional flat surfaces, including very low friction coefficients. In this work, we modified meso-porous silicon micro-pillars to incorporate networks of metal nano-particles into the porous matrix. In doing so, we obtained a multifunctional-hierarchical system in which (i) at a larger micrometric scale, the super-hydrophobic pillars bring the molecules dissolved in an ultralow-concentration droplet to the active sites of the device, (ii) at an intermediate meso-scale, the meso-porous silicon film adsorbs the low molecular weight content of the solution and, (iii) at a smaller nanometric scale, the aggregates of silver nano-particles would measure the target molecules with unprecedented sensitivity. In the results, we demonstrated how this scheme can be utilized to isolate and detect small molecules in a diluted solution in very low abundance ranges. The presented platform, coupled to Raman or other spectroscopy techniques, is a realistic candidate for the protein expression profiling of biological fluids.
超疏水表面是一种具有仿生界面的表面，其表面纹理在最常见的形式下由硅微柱的周期性晶格形成。与传统的平面表面相比，类似的表面具有优越的性能，包括非常低的摩擦系数。在这项工作中，我们对中孔硅微柱进行了修饰，将金属纳米粒子的网络纳入多孔基质中。通过这样做，我们获得了一个多功能的分层系统，其中：(i) 在更大的微米尺度上，超疏水的柱子将溶解在超低浓度液滴中的分子带到器件的活性位点；(ii) 在中间的中孔尺度上，中孔硅薄膜吸附溶液中低分子量的内容物；(iii) 在更小的纳米尺度上，银纳米粒子的聚集体将以前所未有的灵敏度测量目标分子。在结果中，我们展示了如何利用该方案在非常低的丰度范围内从稀释溶液中分离和检测小分子。该平台与拉曼或其他光谱技术相结合，是生物流体蛋白质表达分析的一个现实的候选方案。
