Prof. Sharon Weiss
Departments of Electrical Engineering and Physics, Vanderbilt University
January 26, 2010 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 521 Cory Hall, Hogan Room
Host: Luke Lee
Understanding the infiltration dynamics of species exposed to porous media is of great importance for a plethora of applications ranging from drug delivery and sensors to photovoltaics, fuel cells, and optical interconnects. This talk will focus on the study of size-dependent molecular infiltration in porous silicon nanoscale pores for biosensing applications. Experiments and complimentary simulations will be presented to demonstrate the infiltration and detection of variable length nucleic acids in porous silicon with controllable pore diameters. The pore diameter must be tuned according to target molecule size in order to achieve the largest sensor response. A quantitative relationship between pore size (15-60 nm), nucleic acid length (up to 24mer), and sensor response will be presented with smaller molecules detected more sensitively in smaller pores as long as the pore diameter is sufficient to enable molecular infiltration and binding in the pores. The density of probe molecules on the pore walls and subsequent hybridization efficiency for target molecule binding will also be reported and will be shown to depend strongly on the method of infiltration as well as the target molecule size.
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