Spectroscopically Enhancing Electrical Nanotraps

摘要

One of the greatest challenges in nanoscience is the development of efficient methods for physically probing or trapping a nanomaterial or small collection of molecules with the capability to spectroscopically identify these entities. The small size of nanomaterials often prohibits the use of conventional spectroscopic tools to locate and identify them. Scanning-probe technologies allow nanomaterials to be physically placed and characterized on a surface, and single-molecule spectroscopies allow individual molecules or particles to be observed, but only if they can be addressed; to do so, relatively high concentrations of the probe molecules (ca. 100 pM) are typically required. A method for rapidly concentrating a nanomaterial or set of molecules to be probed in a nanoscale reaction vessel coupled with the ability to spectroscopically identify such materials would be a significant advance.